BIOFUELS AND THE FINANCIALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM - Food Systems Failure - page 79

South, where environmental regulations are weak or non-existent. Whether 'agricul-
ture' itself is the answer to the accumulation crisis is not necessarily the point, given
Northern subsidies to agribusiness, energy and transport companies, and Southern
concessions to investors.
Noting that agriculture is generally considered to be an inferior arena for added
value, François Houtart asks: 'How, therefore, can agriculture become a new frontier
for the accumulation of capital?' (2010, p127). Because of the limits on realization
of agricultural capital given by food demand inelasticity, compounded by the active
marginalization of the majority of humanity (as consumers), the only feasible an-
swer for Houtart is agrofuels, 'whih have come just in time to revive the prices
of agricultural products and their role as a financial refuge in times of crisis' (2010,
p128). 9 Affirming this view, the UN reported in 2007 that biofuels were the fastest
growing segment of the world agricultural market (ETC, 2007, p2), fuelled by cross-
sectoral (and infrastructural) alliances between energy, agribusiness, trading com-
panies, hedge funds, sovereign funds, states, UN agencies and universities. 10 he ex-
pansion of an agrofuels frontier in the global South represents an appropriation of
heap (or free) land and low-cost labour on industrial plantations of sugar cane, soy,
eucalyptus, oil palm, maize, wheat and jatropha.
The cost of land may be low for investors, but not to the locals. 11 For example,
in Ethiopia (one atractive investment site for agrofuels), an agriculture ministry of-
ficial identified over seven million acres of 'virgin land', to be leased at an annual
rate of about 50 cents per acre (Rice, 2009). Ethiopia's 'land lease project', intended
to develop large-scale commercial farming (mainly for export of food and fuel), will
involve the allocation of three million hectares of 'idle land' by 2013 (about 20 per
cent of currently cultivated land). 12 However, an indigenous Anuak from the fertile
Gambella region of Ethiopia observed: 'All the land round my family village of Illia
has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian
company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no com-
pensation' (quoted in Daniel, 2010, p28). International Land Coalition policy special-
ist, Mihael Taylor, has noted:
If land in Africa hasn't been planted, it's probably for a reason. Maybe it's used
to graze livestok or deliberately let fallow to prevent nutrient depletion and
erosion. Anybody who has seen these areas identified as unused understands
that there is no land in Ethiopia that has no owners and users.
quoted in Daniel (2010, p20)