Germany blames Chinese land buys for Africa drought

[MrsMo]

Huh?


Germany's Africa policy coordinator on Thursday blamed China's practice of buying up land in the Horn of Africa for contributing to the devastating drought ravaging the region. The person being interviewed, Guenter Nooke, goes on to state that China is using the land for industrial farming, but never tells you how that ties in to the drought in Africa - but does proclaim that, "this catastrophe is also man-made." (Guess he hasn't seen the NASA satellite data.) He does state that buying the large tracts of land and farming it for export displaces the small, local farmer, taking away has livelihood - although this ties industrial farming to social upheaval and not drought.

I just have a few questions. How does industrial farming create drought? More importantly, why is any African nation allowing any food - regardless of how it's grown - to be exported when they are in the middle of a devastating drought and their own people are starving to death?

Here's the link to the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/germany-blames-chinese-land-buys-africa-drought-005356226.html

[Kitz E Kat]

I dunno Mrs Mo, I heard an interview on the radio during the week: The head of an Irish aid agency was saying that rather than ship in food supplies like they normally do in these situations they are just giving the money to local traders who are directly supplying the food to the local families. Now hold on a second!
You can get food from the local traders if you have the money? That implies food availability is not actually a problem, but rather money is.
So there is food available but unless you have money you can go starve... and I think you will find that is not far from the norm.
The country is fcuked up and needs sorting out, but politics gets in the way and people starve.

I did hear something about the Chinese farming for export there which sounds mad, but the Chinese are cash rich and able to buy what they want, including US bonds so I would have no problem believing it. And the local government would allow it as they would be getting the money and feck the locals !
Revolution!

[MrsMo]

A few days ago I read about riots at an aid station where 7 people were shot by the military. It seems that the military was stealing the food the aid agency (I can't remember which agency it was right now, but I think it was from the UN) had brought in and the people started fighting to get something before the military had taken it all - of course the military are the ones with the guns, so they won. The article went on to say that the aid agency usually does what they call "wet feeding" because they truck in already prepared food to hand out (picture a soup kitchen) due to exactly this kind of situation. It's much harder to steal a pot of hot gruel than to steal a bag of wheat.

The whole situation is frustrating. Innocents are being starved to death because it seems that African governments are made up of nothing more than war lords; the UN shipping in food only seems to support the ones in power who are creating the real problem. I want to help, but I'm not going to send money so that the powerful can take it and continue allowing their citizenry to starve to death.

[Apathy]

That's the way it's been in Africa for a long time. Those in power take and those below see about 1% of what gets donated after all the skimming at various levels. It's frustrated aid agencies for years.

You might be interested in this report. (http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/OI_Ethiopa_Land_Investment_report.pdf) (warning: pdf) It deals with Ethiopia but has some interesting bits about water usage.