The New Enclosures

SOYMB and its African companion blog Socialist Banner has previously highlighted the threat of what is called land-grabbing. We now read more of it from Oxfam.

An increasing number of land deals are displacing farmers and leaving poor communities homeless, Oxfam warned. It says up to 227m hectares (560m acres) have been sold or leased worldwide since 2001. Half of these deals are in Africa.

The organisation's Chief Executive, Barbara Stocking, said the "blinkered scramble" for land by investors was ignoring the needs of those who live on the land and depend upon it for their survival. "Many of the world's poorest people are being left worse off by the unprecedented pace of land deals and the frenetic competition for land." She said "Investors, no matter how noble they pertain to be, cannot sweep aside the needs and rights of poor communities who depend on the land they profit from."

The report warns that rural communities rarely have full legal title to the land documented and women, who produce up to 80% of food in some countries, generally have weaker land r

20,000 people lost their homes and land in evictions in Uganda to make way for a UK-based timber company, the New Forests Company, to grow plantations.

In China a similar trend is taking place. The government is compulsory purchasing peasants land so propert developers can build factories and industrial estates.

Villagers at Liuxiazhuang received notices of the confiscation of parts of their farmland and the bulldozers promptly rolled in. Hired hooligans appeared at the village with metal pipes in hand to give dissenters a beating. Young and old alike were brutally beaten.Villagers say that men beat them were party cadres and police looked on.

This took place just weeks ahead of the autumn harvest, and the farmers could hardly believe they had not only lost their land, but their last season of crops. What has incensed farmers have been the details of the agreement between the government and the property developers: rental for each mu (the Chinese calculation for a unit of land) went for about $100 (about 700 yuan) with a 15-year lease. Considering the region is one of the wealthiest parts of China, the developers had received a windfall. The market rate for a mu of land typically runs at $42,000 (270,000 yuan). The discrepancy between the two figures is striking. More than $6,000 (40,000 yuan) have been pledged by the government to the village collective for each unit of land taken. With 800 mu of land converted, and $6,000 (40,000 yuan) per mu for the village, that comes to about $6,800 (43,000 yuan) per affected villager. Yet, none of the villagers seem to be aware of the existence of this money set aside ostensibly for them. According to villagers, they have not received a penny from the deal so far. That raises questions about who that money has gone to.

Without any other means of income, the $10,000 can stretch for a few years based on the cost of living in that area, in exchange for the loss of land that may have been occupied by a farming family for generations.
"What will they do after the money runs out?"
"Well. They do receive social insurance," one of the officials piped up. "The elderly receive 100 yuan [$15] a month!"