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  • From: "Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: "permacultue discussion list" <pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] daewoo colonises madagascar, foof as a weapon
  • Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:45:40 +1100

http://www.grain.org/videos/?id=194

Korean women farmers on the Daewoo/Madagascar land deal

* Interview with Han Young Me, Chief of Policy, Korean Women Peasants
Association (KWPA)
Dae-gu, South Korea, 4 December 2008*

*Daewoo Logistics is a subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo
Corporation. In November 2008, world media reported that it was securing
rights to 1.3 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar -- half the
country's arable soils. The company intends to produce corn for export back
to Korea. Daewoo said the deal is meant to assure Korea's food security.
They described food as a weapon, and boasted that their job was to be able
to ship food to Korea in case of crisis. A lot of people around the world
were shocked by this news and called it neocolonialism.*

*GRAIN sat down with Han Young Me of the Korean Women Peasants Alliance to
learn what Korean farmers think of the Daewoo deal and of the Korean
government's overall push to have corporations go abroad to produce the
country's food.*

*What has been the discussion in Korea about the Daewoo/Madagascar deal?
What do people know about it and what are their basic reactions?*

Most people in Korea are not informed of the Daewoo/Madagascar deal because
the Korean media haven't paid much attention to it. I myself didn't know
what happened until GRAIN asked us about it. Since then, I realised what was
happening in the country.

About the Korean people's reaction, almost all people have an attitude of
acceptance toward the Lee Myung-Bak administration's policy to secure the
food base of Korea in foreign countries. They already know that there are
food security issues in other countries because of the reports of riots in
the streets in Africa and elsewhere. The idea is to have access to cheap
food, especially animal feed for livestock, in other countries. Almost all
people accept it. The reason for this is that the media spin the issue this
way.

*The Korean government has an active policy of supporting Korean
corportations like LG, Hanwa and others to go farming abroad to provide for
domestic needs. How do Korean farmers assess this kind of strategy to
achieve "food security"?*

The food self-sufficiency rate in Korea, including rice, is about 25%. If
you exclude rice, we import 95% of our food. So, it's true, the
self-sufficiency rate is very low, and the farmers and farmers'
organizations argue that we need to raise the self-sufficiency rate.

This food self-sufficiency rate is what the government uses to justify its
policy on farming abroad. And instead of developing good quality land for
farming in Korea, the government is giving what land we have to industrial
development: for buildings and for industrial complexes. It is also
reclaiming coastal lands for industrial use. So the government's argument is
contradictory. We have low food self-sufficiency but instead of developing
land for farming, they give the land to industrial use.

*"The Korean government's argument is contradictory. We have low food
self-sufficiency but instead of developing land for farming, they give the
land to industrial use.*"

To overcome this contradiction, the government should think of how to secure
self-sufficiency in Korea instead of overseas farming and the Korean
government has to work together with farmers side-by-side. But the Korean
government has not done this. Even this year, 2008, our food
self-sufficiency rate went down. But if you went out to the farms, you would
see that farmers stopped harvesting and left produce rotting in the field
because they could not make ends meet and failed to find a market to sell
to. So the farmers' organisations argue that farming abroad is not the
answer to food insecurity. The answer is raising the food self-sufficiency
rate domestically. It's a strong issue right now.

*How does this struggle around "food self-sufficiency" and "food security"
relate to the broader struggle for "food sovereignty" that groups like KWPA
and the Korean Peasant League are engaged in?*

Before Via Campesina started advocating for food sovereignty, the Korean
farmers organisations were focused on national food security. We thought we
needed to prepare for a time when food could be used as a weapon. That is
what we argued during the struggle against the GATT Uruguay Round. And that
is what we saw this year, when we experienced the food crisis: countries cut
off their food exports. Even though we had money, we could not buy food, and
this kind of situation could get worse. That's why the international
institutions tried to stop the export restrictions.

In fact, it's really important that people can access safe food. That's real
food security, that's people's right to food. We depend on overseas, not
only for food but for farm equipment, oil supplies and seeds. How to cut
this overseas dependence and how to maintain the people's right to food: the
government has to deal with this. Otherwise, farmers cannot produce safe
food. So the government has to protect the farmers' right to produce. That's
food sovereignty. And the first step is to increase our self-sufficiency
rate.

For example, KWPA is conducting a campaign to recover native seeds, which
have been lost throughout Korea. Traditional varieties are a good method to
raise the self-sufficiency rate and preserving them is a way to cut off GM
food and reduce overseas dependency. The campaign on native seeds increases
biodiversity at the local level and provides the basis for self-sufficiency
and it increases women farmers' rights.

*Do you think that through the Daewoo deal, and others, Korea will be
pushing a bad agricultural production model on other countries? What impact
will it have on farmers there, for example in Madagascar?*

Since the 1960s and the green revolution, for less than 40 years, Korean
farmers have had to adapt their farms or leave the land. Since then, Korean
farmers entered into capitalized agriculture and produced for commodity
chains, and we went into debt. And even though most Korean farmers farm
their land, it is used as collateral for loans. Or some farm on the land of
absentee landlords. It is like being an agricultural worker. And farmers
cannot live with only incomes from farming, so they have to do two or three
side jobs.

That is our situation. Probably the same will be true of people in
Madagascar with the Daewoo deal. But while we were subjected to hybrid
seeds, in Madagascar they probably have to face GMOs. And they will have
monoculture plantations. And there is no way that the Daewoo/Madagascar deal
will increase jobs. Daewoo has already said that it would hire people from
other countries to work the land to take advantage of lower wages. So this
deal will not create employment in Madagascar.

**We, the farmers, did not create this situation, but it looks like we are
passing our problems to others. So we feel guilty for the farmers in
Madagascar as we can expect that it will have a bad impact on them. I want
them to stop, so that people don't face this situation any more and suffer
from TNCs. We cannot live with our rights violated like this. We should deny
and resist. But in Korea, farmers are used to targetting the government.
Like when we struggled against the Korea-Chile FTA, we targetted the two
governments, not the private capitalists. We are not used to targetting the
corporations, as industrial workers are. So now, the farmers movement has to
change and target transnational capital.

*"We, the farmers, did not create this situation, but it looks like we are
passing our problems to others. So we feel guilty for the farmers in
Madagascar as we can expect that it will have a bad impact on them. *"

*The Daewoo/Madagascar deal is just one of many that Korean firms, and the
government, are involved in. And many other countries and investors are
doing the same. Given that it's a bigger problem, what do you think should
be done? What would you say to Daewoo if you could tell them something?*

It's a really tough question. The answer depends on our level of
preparation.

Actually, the background of Daewoo's investment is Lee Myung-Bak's policy.
This policy for farming abroad was considered and abolished in the past, but
Lee Myung-Bak restored this policy to support overseas farm investment. It's
now national policy. So right now, not only Daewoo but many other Korean
TNCs are going around trying to find appropriate land for food production in
foreign countries. I would ask the Lee Myung-Bak government and the TNCs
whether growing food overseas is really a good way to provide for Korean
people's right to food! As we saw this year, with the candlelight vigil
protest against US beef and the melamine scandal, importing food is not
always safe. So we oppose overseas production and have to make our own
production systems in the rural area, for sustainable agriculture. Also, we
are asking companies not to transport food all over the world. In the 1970s,
the Korean government tried to find candidate lands for food production
abroad. But they were really remote and this posed a problem of
transportation. That's why this policy was abolished in the past. But right
now, the Lee Myung Bak government is trying to revitalise it. The reason
that they now develop overseas production is not for food security but for
their own self-interest. They make an excuse of food security; it's not the
real reason.

What we can do now is inform the people and the government that this kind of
farming abroad is not for people, it's for the TNCs. We have to help people
see this real picture.

*"They make an excuse of food security; it's not the real reason."*

*Is this boom in overseas farm acquisitions something that KWPA and other
farmers' groups will be getting more active on?*

It is really bad for Korean companies like Daewoo to occupy the land of
foreign peoples like neocolonialists. Daewoo is bound to earn the same
reputation as Monsanto or Cargill from such practices.

The first thing we can do right now is develop an internal position between
KWPA and the Korean Peasant League about the Lee Myung-Bak government's
overseas farming policy. We also have to make a statement on that.

Secondly, since Daewoo and other Korean companies are expanding such
investments in Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia, we have to prepare a
joint statement with farmers from Asia and Africa who are suffering from
these kinds of deals.

*"It is really bad for Korean companies like Daewoo to occupy the land of
foreign peoples like neocolonialists. Daewoo is bound to earn the same
reputation as Monsanto or Cargill from such practices."*



--
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor



  • [permaculture] daewoo colonises madagascar, foof as a weapon, Nicholas Roberts, 12/19/2008

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