Basically, since after the 2008 food price hike, the World Bank has been at the forefront of propagating private investments on lands with a win-win rhetoric that these deals would ensure food security for all as well as improve agricultural and living conditions in the host countries. Through its private sector arm – the International Financial Corporation(IFC) – and the Foreign Investment advisory Service (FIAS), the World Bank finances agro-investments, promotes and encourages policies aimed at cutting down on red tapes that could inhibit foreign direct investments in developing countries.
IFC primarily finances private sector investments. Following its conviction that the food crisis has provided an opportunity for agricultural development in emerging markets, it has tailored its response in two directions: transferring of technologies and know-hows to improve productivity and ensuring the use of unused or underutilised lands for agricultural productions. Accordingly, in the fiscal year ended in June 2008, its investments in the agribusiness was valued in excess of $1.3 billion. In 2009, it entered into a $ 625 million alliance with Altima Partners aimed at identifying “farming talents” in developing countries and helping in expanding farm production with the help of additional capital and the introduction of modern farm technologies. This is just one instance out of many; in fact, IFC Annual Report 2008 has it that the numbers of agribusiness projects supported by IFC moved from 17 in 2005 to 32 in 2008, just to show an idea of the rate at which its involvement in supporting agribusiness might be going. Less visible than financing private sector investment, perhaps, is IFC’s work of providing Technical Assistance and Ad...
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...y, investment, hedge funds or funds-of-funds of the same end.
In 2010 DEG/FMO/Swedfund was reported to have paid €258 million to lease 57,000 ha in Sierra Leone for 50 years to construct a sugarcane plantation, ethanol refinery and a biomass power generation plant which affected 13, 000 people; Norfund-Agrica rice farm projects in Kilombero Valley Tanzania involving about 5,000 ha threatened 2,000 villagers with relocation ; Norfund also invested NOK 64 million in Agri-Vie, a private equity investment fund focused on food and agribusiness in Sub-Saharan Africa whose controversial 20,000 ha New Forests Company project in Uganda has displaced over 20,000 people . These are very few examples of how DFIs around the world – Europe in this case - aid the proliferation of land grabs. Worst still is the fact that most of these investments involve shady financial deals.
This essay is about the land rights of of Australia and how Eddie Marbo was not happy about his land been taken away from him. In May 1982 Eddie Marbo and four other people of the Murray Islands began to take action in the high court of Australia and confirming their land rights. Eddie Marbo was a torres islander who thought that the Australian laws were wrong and who went to fight and try and change them. He was born in 1936 on Mer which is known as Murray Island. The British Crown in the form of the colony of Queensland became of the sovereign of the islands when they were annexed in1978. They claimed continued enjoyment of there land rights and that had not been validly extinguished by the sovereign. (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012)
I think that he is trying to say that wilderness is something to be cherished and loved, because it gives definition and meaning to his life. His whole life was spent looking after and trying to preserve the wilderness. This is a plea for the preservation. I think that Leopold believes one day a lot of what we have today and he want it to be preserved so that in the future people have the chance to see there cultural inheritance like our ancestors let us see by preserving things.
After the Civil War, the United States was torn on how to provide services to freed slaves, or freedmen. Eventually the Freedmen's Bureau emerged from the confusion. This bureau gave food, shelter, and education to freedmen, but also did one more very important service. The Freedmen's Bureau helped to get the emancipated slaves on their feet by providing land to each of them. "Forty acres and a mule"(Abbot, 52) was the amount of land and property that each family or single man in South Carolina was to get. To freedmen, freedom was only achieved when they were in control of some type of property. Unfortunately, three problem arose; the government needed to attain a sufficient amount of land to provide the expected forty acres, distribute that land properly, and later fight the original owners for that land.
...struggling to earn any income at all and sometimes do not even get the opportunity to eat. Another issue that Raj Patel did not touch on is the lack of care consumers have for the farmers. It seems that consumers care about farmers about as much as the corporations do, which, in my opinion, is not a lot. When consumers only care about low prices and large corporations only care about making a profit, the farmers are left out to dry. Many consumers believe “food should be available at a bargain price, a belief that relies on labor exploitation and environmental exhaustion at multiple points along the commodity chain.” (Wright, 95) Corporations as well as consumers generally tend to be selfish and I think Raj Patel is afraid to mention this. If only these people cared a little bit more about each other I believe the hourglass of the food system will begin to even out.
Bosshard states that the “World Bank was set to receive its first grant on February 11th, 2014 but removed the project from its board calendar the previous week.” (Bosshard, 2014) Bosshard’s concerns for the project range from financial stress on the poorest inhabitants of the region to environmental issues.
At the same time, investment funds seek to raise funds to enable increased Brazilian investment in Africa. In this sense, the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV Projects) aims to raise funds of approximately $ 1 billion for the development of agricultural projects. DWS Investments, manager owned by the German Deutsche Bank, coordinate the fund. Moreover, in June 2012, BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Brazil, also announced plans to raise $ 1 billion and create a ’world’ investment fund to Africa, for areas such as infrastructure, energy and agriculture.
United Nation Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretariat. ¡°Farmers and Farmers Associations In Developing Countries And Their Use of Modern Financial Instruments. Geneva: 10 January 2002.
To really begin to understand this complex topic a person really needs to understand the basics of agricultural subsidizing. A subsidy is defined as a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public (Mish, 2003). More specifically, in the agricultural industry the government provides financial assistance to producers in the farm industry in order to prevent decline in production. The government does this by providing financial assistance to farmers and by managing the cost and supply of certain commodities. There a few reasons for this. One reason is to provide assistance to family sized farm owners who have trouble competing with commercial farms. This is supposed to maintain an efficient market balance. Another reason is to control the prices of commodities and keep the global food prices low. There are two main ways that payments are made. The payments may be made directly based on historical cropping patterns on a fixed number of acres. Or they can also be made depending on current market prices. Farmer’s may be guaranteed...
Farmers are essentially the back-bone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production, (CSS statistics). Without farmers, there would be no food for us to consume. Big business picked up on this right away and began to control the farmers profits and products. When farmers buy their land, they take out a loan in order to pay for their land and farm house and for the livestock, crops, and machinery that are involved in the farming process. Today, the loans are paid off through contracts with big business corporations. Since big business has such a hold over the farmers, they take advantage of this and capitalize on their crops, commodities, and profits. Farmers are life-long slaves to these b...
Nierenberg, Danielle. "Factory farming in the developing world: In some critical respects, this is not progress at all." World Watch 1 May 2003: n. pag. eLibrary. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. .
Few concerns have surfaced in economy that plays a vital role in agriculture and therefore in economic development. Developing countries and more even, LDC’s, are dependent on agriculture for income for the population. But achieving good agriculture means that many things have to change within these countries self. Good transportation is need in these countries and more often than not the infrastructure doesn’t allow this to happen and transporting agricultural goods are more expensive for these countries, thus these countries need capital and investments to further their outputs and inputs to gain bet...
Woodward, D. (2001). The next crisis?: Direct and equity investment in developing countries. London: Zed Books.
Two common products that are Fair Trade Certified are Cocoa and Coffee, each of which contains problems that producers face but gain benefits from Fair Trade. Fairtrade International states that cocoa is grown in tropical regions of more than 30 developing countries, such as West Africa and Latin America, providing an estimate of 14 million people with livelihood. Fair Trade Standards for cocoa includes no forced labor of any kind - including child labor and environmental standards restricts the use of chemicals and encourage sustainability. A problem cocoa producers face is the lack of access to markets and financing. Since cocoa is a seasonal crop, producers need loans to meet the needs for planting and cultivating their crop. With this in mind,...
There are 27.4 million people that live in these targeted regions and of that 40.5% of them live in poverty and 37.1% of the children of five were suffering from stunting (Feed the Future). In the areas of Bangladesh that Feed the Future has been targeting, they have been fairly effective. Between 2011 and 2014, there has been a 14.4% reduction in childhood stunting. There has also been roughly a 16% decrease in poverty in areas Feed the Future has been working. This was done by helping smallholder farmers learn how to use new technologies and management practices. They are getting close to hitting their goal in 2017 of 32.4% poverty and 30.5% stunting in children under 5 years. The efforts they have put into help farmers and producers to improve the agricultural products resulted in an increase value of sales of $129.57 million (Feed the Future). Bangladesh has also increased the amount of rice they have been exporting because with all the agricultural innovations their rice production
...earch and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers. Rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades, and now is the time to reverse this trend. Farmers in many developing countries are operating in an environment of inadequate infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communications; poor soils; lack of storage and processing capacity; and little or no access to agricultural technologies that could increase their profits and improve their livelihoods. Recent unrest over food prices in a number of countries may tempt policymakers to put the interests of urban consumers over those of rural people, including farmers, but this approach would be shortsighted and counterproductive. Given the scale of investment needed, aid donors should also expand development assistance to agriculture, rural services, and science and technology.