BIOFUELS AND THE FINANCIALIZATION OF THE GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM - Food Systems Failure - page 82

The enclosure of land for agrofuels, and food, in the global South is revitalizing a
long-standing (but institutionally dormant) modernization trope, namely that mod-
ernization of agriculture is necessary to development. The recent World Bank World
Development Report (2008), 17 centred on 'agriculture for development', was the first
time in a quarter of a century that this key development institution paid atention
to agriculture. It appears that the urgency of the food and energy crises has refo-
cused the atention of the global political-economic elite on mobilizing agricultur-
al resources to offset food, water and fuel shortages. Agricultural land in the global
South, in particular, is targeted for 'productivity increase' via tehniication. For ex-
ample, Susan Payne, CEO of Emergent Asset Management (a UK investment fund
planning to spend $50m on African land) declared:
Farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is giving 25 per cent returns a year and new
tehnology can treble crop yields in short time frames … Agricultural develop-
ment is not only sustainable, it is our future. If we do not pay great care and
atention now to increase food production by over 50 per cent before 2050, we
will face serious food shortages globally.
quoted in Vidal (2010)
In Africa, muh of the land is communally held, but is subject to government
designation as 'idle' land, 18 and given potential rewards through commercialization.
Unsurprisingly, international development and financial institutions are working be-
hind the scenes on privatising land relations to enable and atract foreign investment
in African land. US investment, for example, is encouraged by the US government's
Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), whih disburses money in the form of
grants to particular countries on condition that they meet certain neoliberal econom-
ic criteria. Most MCC Compacts signed with African countries focus on agriculture,
with a central land privatization component supporting 'market-based solutions to
food security'. Suh provisions include certifying outgrowers for food exports; con-
structing infrastructure to gain access to world markets; and partnering with The Al-
liance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to provide inputs to farmers in their
first year (GRAIN, 2010a).
Infrastructure is critical to the land-grab and includes a complex of processes of
legal adjustments to privatize land; new codes of conduct (Borras and Franco, 2010);
public-private partnerships to build biofuel production and refining capacity; 19 cer-
tiication shemes to standardize biofuel products for the world market; and justi-
ications that intersect with Kyoto's Clean Development Mehanism protocols - en-