News Land Grabbing / Agrofuels – September 2014

Action for the Campaign “Our Land, Our Business” 10 October 2014

Last year AEFJN joined the international campaign “Our Land, Our Business” initiated by the Oakland Institute. The campaign challenges to World Bank to eliminate its Doing Business Rankings and to stop developing its instrument “Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture”. Both rankings are based on the same neoliberal logic of low corporate taxation, privatization and deregulation of the economy. The Doing Business Ranking gives the highest scores to countries that perform the best on “the ease of doing business”. This means generally creating favorable conditions for corporations in the country, like for example, lowering corporate taxation (and also tax holidays), removing environmental and social regulations and lowering, simplifying administrative procedures. This ranking also encourages countries to undertake land reforms in such a way that land can be more easily transferred to investors, in this way facilitating land grabs. Furthermore, the Doing Business Ranking ignores issues such as human rights, economic and social rights and sustainable management of land and resources. Despite all reports of land grabs, illegal resource exploitation and the enormous financial flows leaving Africa illicitly, the World Bank aims to maintain this logic and specify for the agricultural sector with its “Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture”.  Therefore, AEFJN together with other civil society groups will join in an action simultaneously held in several cities around the world, on 10 October. On this day the Bank holds its annual meeting and the idea of the action is to have a series of events worldwide that cannot be ignored. Act and join campaigns in your country! (For more information contact Gino)

More information: website Our Land Our Business     

World Food Day: 16 October 2014

On the occasion of the World Food Day, 16 October 2014, AEFJN was invited by Foodbridge and FAAB (Federation of Anglophone Africans) to deliver a speech for the conference: “Food and Power; the hunger games in Sub- Saharan African politics”. For the conference the AEFJN speaker will highlight the harmful effect land grabbing has on food sovereignty in Sub-Sahara Africa and how mono-cropping cultures lead to the disappearance of culturally appropriate food and its producers, family farmers. The event will take place in Brussels, AEFJN members that are interested to participate, can contact Gino Brunswijck for more information. From your side if you participate in actions or campaigns on World Food Day, please share this with the AEFJN-network.   

For more information:  website Foodbridge & webpage on the conference