ETHIOPIA: A Foreign Battle For Land and Water

[Pam Jacob]

I am horrified at the ever escalating foreign land grabs in emerging/developing countries. I'm following an excellent ongoing year-long-investigation by Center For Investigative Reporting: "FOOD FOR 9 BILLION" and the political/economic/investment disease overtaking foreign farmland under the ruse of "feed the world".

The particular episode Ethiopia: A Foreign Battle for Their Land and Water (more links below) just aired tonight on USA PBS Newshour. This is an issue we women MUST take on.  It is urgent that we address this powerful, rapidly creeping juggernaut immediately, lest Africa (Haiti, India, etc) finds itself once again enslaved by foreign "colonial" interests, this time, devastating tens of millions of indigenous peoples and degrading the environment and natural biodiversity forever, making foreign entities very rich, so they can then sell the same crops back to NGO and UN Agencies during the famines they will create. Further, the very peoples whose land they "stole" will become corporate farm "slaves" in the gigantic corporate water/pesticide/fertilizer sucking crops, at their mercy for wages and well being. 

How do I know this?  I have watched it happen right here in the USA where small family farms and their local knowledge and pride have been swept away by the USDA government and BigAg Industrial Farming conglomerates. It is ugly, sad and has an expensive and powerful PR greenwash machine behind it (much like the tobacco industry). No matter how they couch it, it ultimately is about increasing the bottom line for corporations, private investors and large "family" corporatized farms and contained animal feed lots (CAFOs). If you control the global food supply, you control the people (and all life).

The US Food and farmlands are now so poisoned and polluted with little nutritional value that I believe agricultural globalization needs to be reversed. And we wonder why we have global epidemics of cancer, diabetes and obesity?  We need to come home to Mother Earth and our connection with Her. She cannot keep up with the human onslaught competing for Her resources. Particularly in view of climate change, where local communities can better work together with the coming changes.  The bigger the ship, the harder it is, and longer it takes, to turn around in a storm. Moving people off their land, into urban environments with the lure of jobs and money has not worked. It has created havoc and a generation of youth hanging out there without a lifeline, disconnected from their cultural roots. It is time to put the "seduction" of big money aside and focus on the basic needs of humanity and Nature, lest we write our own epitaph.  I believe this is truly a women's issue and that we MUST Take on This Trojan Horse for the health of our families, future generations and our own well-being and first and foremost for that of Mother Earth.  Let's restore our natural world to health and well-being so that we, too, may once again enjoy the natural rhythms and blessings of that which sustains us every moment of every day - Mother Earth.

Ethiopia: A Battle for Land and Water | Center for Investigative Re...

FOOD FOR 9 BILLION  Ethiopia's Farmer Relocation Plan Raises New Concerns | Marketplace...

Examining Ethiopia's 'villagization' program | Center for Investigative Reporting

The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour VIDEO ETHOPIA.  PHILLIPINES

US Aid to Ethiopia Supports Forced Relocations for Land Grabs | oaklandinstitute.org

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