Corn is the staple food of the peoples of the Central Planalto of Angola. The corn flour is cooked with water in a pan on the fire until it turns to an unsalted thick puré called funge. This is eaten with the conduto, most of the times, a stew. When there are no ingredients for the conduto, women and children look for a sour leaf called Sungua in the ovapya to make the stew. The woman with the child on her back in the photo is collecting Sungua.
The current and impending food crises are increasing pressures on the ownership of land and its use for agriculture. What are the implications of this for family farmers? Land grabs cause large scale migration, poverty and conflict – not to mention environmental impacts. Biodiversity decreases when small family farms are replaced by mono-crops treated with pesticides and fertilizers. Small-scale farmers have little power to farm sustainably if they don’t have control over land: secure access to land is a prerequisite for farmers to invest in sustainable agriculture.
Hundreds of civil society organisations, including farmers' movements, women's groups and non-governmental organisations, will launch a global appeal against farmland grabbing during the G20 meeting on Agriculture in Paris on June 22 and 23.
Over 500 organizations from around the world (1) have joined the "Dakar Appeal Against Land Grabbing" (2) that was originally drawn up at the World Social Forum in Dakar last February and launched by, among others, la Via Campesina and FIAN International.
New York Times
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: May 26, 2011
When the Chinese came looking for more soybeans here in Uruacu last year, they inquired about buying land — lots of it. Officials in this farming area would not sell the hundreds of thousands of acres needed. Undeterred, the Chinese pursued a different strategy: providing credit to farmers and potentially tripling the soybeans grown here to feed chickens and hogs back in China. Click here for full article.
Des géants indiens de l’agroalimentaire achètent ou louent de vastes surfaces arables en Éthiopie, en Ouganda et en Tanzanie.
Cinq années se sont actuellement écoulées depuis la validation de la lettre de politique foncière traçant les grandes orientations de la reforme foncière à Madagascar. Une reforme qui place la décentralisation comme une valeur fondamentale à préserver.