Wakio Seaforth's Profile

The Washington-based International Food Policy
Research Institute believes so. It has recently produced a report containing
recommendations for a binding code of conduct to promote what Japan, the
world's largest food importer, called for at the G8 in Italy – responsible
foreign investment in agriculture in the face of the current pandemic of
landgrabs.

It wants a code "with teeth" to ensure that smallholders being
displaced from their land can negotiate mutually beneficial terms with
foreign governments and multinationals. It wants measures to enforce any
agreement, if promised jobs, wage levels or local facilities fail to
materialise. It wants transparency, and it wants legal action in their home
countries against firms that use bribes, rather than relying on prosecutions
in the Third World. It wants respect for existing land rights – not just
those which are written, but those which exist through custom and practice.
It wants compulsory sharing of benefits, so that schools and hospitals get
built and those living in areas around landgrabs get properly fed. It
suggests shorter-term leases to provide a regular income to farmers whose
land is taken away for other uses. Or, better still, it would like to see
contract farming that leaves smallholders in control of their land but under
contract to provide to the outside investor. It demands proper environmental
impact assessments. And it says foreign investors should not have a right to
export during an acute national food crisis.