I am thinking for the coming period in the future, as a possibility of organizing and developing of International network- of independent Agency’s for land management with in each country , which has to have great influence in political decisions related to land management. Those Agency’s should be supported with EU regulations , and EU recommendations for the member states and others.

The World Bank initiative to define principles and ecommendations on the farmlands investments in the global scale is praiseworthy. But within a civil society organization (CSO) such as the Collective for the defense of Malagasy lands – TANY, it raises numerous questions as for its own capacity to resist to the rich investors ambitions and logics and as for the impact of its propositions to defend the rights and interests of the poorest and most vulnerable populations of the developing countries targeted in the process, especially the farmers.

Madagascar would appear in the 3rd rank of the Africa countries where the investments on farmlands would be important in the next years 1. In front of the seriousness of the stakes, it seems to us vital to seize the opportunity of this debate to reaffirm a few fundamental principles on these deals while the World Bank, its subsidiaries and partners are trying to improve the modalities and regulations in order to increase benefits for the local populations.

We consider three essential ideas to pass on in this debate within the framework of the World Bank:

The investments on farmlands should not include either sales or transfers of lands to the foreigners investors but rents the maximal duration of which will be determined during a national debate in the country. In Madagascar the law forbidding the sale of lands to foreigners was replaced in 2003 2 by a law the application decree of which precised that the lands acquisition would be allowed only for the foreigners whose investments exceeded $ 500 000. At the beginning of 2008, a new law 2007-036 3 was voted authorizing the acquisition of lands by any foreign company which had a Malagasy subsidiary ; the application decree of this law has never been published, but the law has been already applied at least at the level of the Economic Development Board of Madagascar implementation. This structure was created to facilitate the steps of the foreign investors, was financed by the World Bank during the first years and its activities are almost frozen following the World Bank financing interruption in 2009. The opening of the lands sale to the foreigners is often quoted as one of the conditions required by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for the Malagasy leaders.
The international institutions should demand the transparency on contracts between the foreign investors and the states or the companies or the populations of countries addressees of the investments. No serious action of the CSOs can be led in a effective way without this transparency,
* either at the beginning to check if all the stakeholders are informed and participate in the negotiations, and if the studies of social, environmental and economic impacts are realized and adequate
* or during the realization follow-up, to verify if the diverse contract terms are respected

* or at the end of the project, to assure that the contract is not renewed if all the parties do not wish it.

If we hope to improve profits for the host populations and countries, the investments on farmlands should assure from the beginning the economic and financial advantages that the populations will win in addition to the absence of negative environmental and social consequences. Roads and big infrastructures such as the village electrification are mainly useful to the investor project development , schools, health centres and the other units with a social vocation have a limited impact even when they are really built. A sharing of the financial profits between the investors and the involved populations based on an appreciation “at their true worth” of the lands and other local partners contributions is already practised in rare contracts 4 and should be generalized. The CSOs will then take care of making the populations aware of their rights and of the importance of their lands and natural resources values. The duty of the CSO and the citizens will consist in setting up economic development projects, in working on the public capacity increasing, especially in the fragile States, to control the social, environmental and economic impacts, and to guarantee a fair fallout of the profits.

(1) http://farmlandgrab.org/15590 (Tableau 1)

(2) Loi n°2003-028 du 21.08.2003 – Décret n°2003-897 du 27.08.03 in http://newmada.ifrance.com/presentation.htm

(3) http://www.banque-centrale.mg/index.php?id=m4_4_1_11

(4) http://malibiocarburant.com/Sustainable_production.html

The consequences of this are, for example:

1) For change of land use(r), land has to be expropriated. Whenever land is needed for a new purpose, e.g. to build a road, to develop a housing area or for an investment in commercial agriculture, existing land use rights cannot be purchased – they have to be expropriated.

2) This legal set-up forces the Government to act as a middleman (land rights broker) between people who have land rights and people or businesses who have not. It is the Government that has to expropriate land and make it available to investors. Compensation that must be paid by the government cannot be immediately recovered, as investors only lease – not purchase – the land use right. Additionally, the government has to keep a cadre of civil servants on all levels of government to handle these operations. By separating the two parties – the “buyer” and the “seller” – the parties also miss out on an opportunity to negotiate a better deal that could benefit them both, for instance employment for the current landholder in the new business.

3) Compensation for expropriated land use rights cannot buy another landholding. A hard working and productive farmer might unwillingly loose his landholding, but cannot use the compensation he receives to buy land use rights from another farmer, even if this other farmer would be more than willing to sell and venture into some other area of livelihood.

4) Small scale framers will remain small. A farmer can expand his/her operations by renting land, but the interest of the farmer to improve and invest in rented land is likely to be much lower than for a landholding that is secure over time. The able farmers are largely confined to inadequately sized farms, while less able (or reluctant) farmers, cannot sell their holdings but must stay on the land for risk of loosing everything they have if they move away to try some other way of earning a living.

5) There is little access to finance for investing in farms. Rural land use rights must not be mortgaged, but the law approves of land leases, e.g. for commercial farming, being used as collateral for loans. However, banks are not willing to lend money with only a lease right as collateral. If the borrower defaults on his loan, the land cannot be repossessed by the bank and sold to recover the outstanding debt. Lack of finance may be the reason why many farms allocated to national “investors” are lying idle or only partly used.

6) Communal land may be regarded as free land. Traditional agro-pastoralists communities or clans usually have large areas of communal land which is used as grazing land, for collection of firewood or honey, or for slash and burn agriculture. These communal land areas, which are only used periodically, may appear as vacant and may thus be considered as potential land that could be allocated for investments. Such land could be allocated to an investor without any compensation to the community. With extensive allocations (as is now happening in BG) there is a risk that indigenous groups will not be able to sustain themselves from the remaining land in the future.

7) At the end of the lease period an investor will return the land to the State. Approaching the period’s end, the investor can be assumed to have little interest in investing in maintaining land productivity. There is a risk, therefore, that the soil will have been gradually depleted by the time the land is reverted to the State. If the investor had an option to sell the land use right, if and when he no longer wants to pursue his operations, the land would most probably be better looked after.

My thoughts around this are that:
- Expropriation of rural land for commercial farming must be re-examined. Is commercial farming really a “public service”? Authorities need to be absolutely certain that the public in general (including small scale farmers) will benefit from an investment before expropriation takes place.
- Also extensively used land is “held” by somebody. There is in fact hardly any “free” land today in Ethiopia. Compensation should be given to communities or individuals that loose such land, also in the cases when land use rights have not been officially registered.
- Land use or lease rights might not offer sufficient tenure security for landholders, especially if they so easily can be expropriated. Low tenure security leads to lower agriculture productivity. Maybe land ownership could gradually be introduced? I write this hesitantly, as I have always argued that leases are as good as freeholds, but the situation in Ethiopia has changed my view there.
- Restrictions in trading land use rights and leases should be eased. A more open land market could improve economic as well as social development. The condition is, however, that proper protection is put in place to avoid the creation of a large landless and poor population.

Dear Participants,
Let me first apologise for not being able to participate earlier in the eDiscussion.

Like you have been able to gather, the issue of large-scale land acquisitions is a real concern today for governments and people. But they do not have the same preoccupations:

For governments, large-scale acquisiton of land is an opportunity for investment in agriculture, that allows them to get out of the logic of small production and to benefit from exports, but the reality on the ground has proven that governments themselves do not know what the investors do with the land once they have bought it. Their hope of large-scale production to feed their people seems grim. On the other hand, they now face uprisings from the people whose lands are looted.

For communities, they are never consulted, nor informed when the governments negotiate with the investors. They are presented with a fait accompli and the clauses of the contract do not say much about them, which leads to their revolt; civil society is not consulted either and finds themselves in a position to defend the interests of communities.

Concerning intergovernmental organisations, they are not consulted either by the states who have concluded these deals and they also find themselves in a situation of fait accompli. This land issues is at the heart of state sovereignty, which means that intergovernmental organisations have very little ability to pressure these states.

We think that:
- Consultation within countries between governments and communities and civil society are needed in order to explain the clauses contained in the contracts with foreign investors. The option of land security has to be proposed to family farmers, who form the base of agriculture in the majority of West Africa;
- at the regional level, consultations between countires is a way to generate a code of conduct that all countries must respect
- The complexity of the situation comes from the fact that very few countries have the regulations needed to confront this phenomenon of land grabbing. At the regional level as well, there does not exist a reference point to guide countires and warn them of the problems.
- Actually, in West Africa, studies have been done to try and understand the magnitude of this phenomenon in countries to make suitable provision for securing family farms.