permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

- and that means everything you might think it means, yes to all of the
above.

What about permaculture individuals, organizations and teams working with
existing landowners to secure as much Black Earth Region land as possible
for
ecologically and environmentally sound agricultural practices with local
and regional sales to Ukrainians.
What do you think about this Steve, Scott and anyone else? It offends my
sensibilities to the max to think of this beautiful land wasted on
unthinkably
wasteful ag practices, Ukraine, USA, Africa, Asia, Southern Hemisphere.
><><

Is Europe’s Breadbasket Up for Grabs? | Inter Press Service
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/07/is-europes-breadbasket-up-for-grabs/

“These reforms sound good on paper, but when you look more closely you see
they are actually designed to benefit large multinational corporations over
workers and small-scale farmers." -- Frédéric Mousseau
Ukraine is the world’s third-largest exporter of cotton and the
fifth-largest exporter of wheat. Credit: Bigstock

NEW YORK, Jul 30 2014 (IPS) - Amidst an exodus of some 100,000 people from
the conflict-torn eastern Ukraine, ongoing fighting in the urban
strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk between Ukrainian soldiers and
separatist rebels, and talk of more sanctions against Russia, it is hard to
focus on the more subtle changes taking place in this eastern European
nation.

But while global attention has been channeled towards the political crisis,
sweeping economic reforms are being ushered in under the leadership of the
newly elected president Petro Poroshenko, who recently brokered deals with
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that have rights groups on
edge.


Even before Poroshenko assumed office on Jun. 7, international financial
institutions (IFIs) were rushing emergency missions into the country, with
IMF European Department Director Reza Moghadam declaring
<https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2014/pr1487.htm> on a Mar. 7 visit,
“I am positively impressed with authorities’ determination, sense of
responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform.”

After years of dangling a 17-billion-dollar loan – withheld in part due to
ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to implement a highly
contested pension reform bill that would have raised the retirement age by
10 years, and his insistence on curbing gas price hikes – the IMF has now
released its purse strings.

The World Bank followed suit, announcing a 3.5-billion-dollar aid package
on May 22 that the Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, said was conditional
upon the government “removing restrictions that hinder competition and […]
limiting the role of state control in economic activities.”

While these reforms include calls for greater transparency to spur economic
growth, experts are concerned that Ukraine’s rapid pivot to Western
neoliberal policies could spell disaster, particularly in the immense
agricultural sector that is widely considered the ‘breadbasket of Europe.’

*A quiet land-grab*

Ukraine is the world’s third-largest exporter of cotton and the
fifth-largest exporter of wheat. Agriculture accounts for about 10 percent
of gross domestic product (GDP), with vast fields of fertile soil yielding
bumper harvests of grain and cereals each year.

According to a 2013 forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Ukraine
is poised to become the world’s second biggest grain exporter in the world
(after the U.S.), shipping over 30 million tonnes of grain out of the
country last year.

The World Bank estimates that farmers and agricultural workers made up 17
percent <http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS> of the
country’s labour force as of 2012. And according to the Centre for Eastern
Studies, agricultural exports soared in the last decade
<http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2014-02-07/transformation-agriculture-ukraine-collective-farms-to>,
from 4.3 billion dollars in 2005 to 17.9 billion dollars in 2012.

Lush soil and a rich agrarian culture do not immediately add up to
nationwide dividends. Potential investors have cited“red tape” and
“corruption” as hindrances to development, as well as a communist legacy
that forbids the sale of land.
Related IPS Articles

   - Separatist Violence Just One of Ukraine’s Problems
   
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/05/separatist-violence-just-one-ukraines-problems/>
   - U.S. Ukraine Aid Frustrated by IMF Reform Debate
   
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/u-s-ukraine-aid-frustrated-imf-reform-debate/>
   - The Uses of Ukraine <http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/uses-ukraine/>
   - World Bank Formally Urged to Overhaul ‘Doing Business’ Report
   
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/world-bank-formally-urged-to-overhaul-doing-business-report/>

But the past decade has seen an abrupt change in Ukraine’s agricultural
sector, with foreign investors and agri-business hugely expanding ownership
and influence in the country.

According to a report
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/press-release-world-bank-and-imf-open-ukraine-western-interests>
released Monday by the U.S.-based Oakland Institute, over 1.6 million
hectares of land have been signed over to multinational companies since
2002, including “over 405,000 hectares to a company listed in Luxembourg,
444,800 hectares to Cyprus-registered investors, 120,000 hectares to a
French corporation, and 250,000 hectares to a Russian company.”

A deal brokered between China and Yanukovych prior to the political crisis
– now disputed under the present regime – granted Beijing control over some
three million hectares of prime farmland in the east, an area about the
size of Belgium that totals five percent of Ukraine’s arable land.

This changing climate has been a boon for investors and corporations, with
Michael Cox, research director at the investment bank Piper Jaffray,
referring to Ukraine as one of the “most promising growth markets for
farm-equipment giant Deere, as well as seed producers Monsanto and DuPont.”

Such statements have raised a red flag among researchers and trade
watchdogs.

OI Executive Director Anuradha Mital told IPS, “IFIs are imposing
Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in Ukraine, which we know – from
the experience of the Third World – will undoubtedly lead to severe
austerity measures for the people and increase poverty among the
Ukrainians.”

“Ukraine is also one of the 10 pilot countries in the World Bank’s new
Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) project,” Mittal told IPS,
referring to a brand new initiative <http://bba.worldbank.org/>, still in
the development stage, which is connected to the Bank’s controversial Doing
Business <http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/our-land-our-business> rankings.

This index has been criticised
<http://www.ituc-csi.org/why-the-world-bank-must-do-better> by numerous
groups including the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) –
comprised of over 176 million members hailing from 161 countries – for
favouring low taxes for transnational corporations and lowering labour
standards in developing countries as a means of attracting foreign
investment.

The Bank itself says the BBA will largely serve as a tool for improving
agricultural output.

“The world needs to feed nine billion people by 2050,” a World Bank
spokesperson told IPS.

“For small-scale farmers to be more productive and far more competitive,
they need access to land, finance, improved seed, fertiliser, water,
electricity, transport and markets.

“By identifying and monitoring policies and regulations that limit access
of smaller producers to these critical components of success, BBA is being
designed as a tool to foster an enabling environment that boosts local and
regional agribusinesses,” she concluded.

David Sedik, senior policy officer at the Food and Agriculture
Organisation’s (FAO) regional office for Europe and Central Asia, believes
such an initiative is sorely needed in Ukraine, where “the primary
beneficiaries of subsidies granted by the agricultural VAT system are…
large agri-holding companies, the overwhelming majority of which are
Ukrainian.”

“The list of needed reforms is quite long, and could start with building a
more transparent land market,” he told IPS. “A first step in this direction
could be the lifting of the moratorium on land sales.”

“The BBA project seems to support the construction of a transparent and
inclusive system of agricultural regulation, something Ukraine lacks,”
Sedik added.

But the OI report’s co-author Frédéric Mousseau says initiatives like the
BBA and others exist primarily to pry open Ukraine’s doors, hitherto sealed
by its socialist traditions, to foreign capital.

“These reforms sound good on paper, but when you look more closely you see
they are actually designed to benefit large multinational corporations over
workers and small-scale farmers,” Mousseau told IPS.

“Ranking systems like the BBA push for contract farming, which entails
farmers working for corporations, instead of as subsistence producers. We
are denouncing this rhetoric, and its attendant struggle between different
foreign interests over Ukraine’s resources.”

Research into the impacts of the Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ rankings in eight
countries – including Mali
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/world-banks-bad-business-mali>, Sierra
Leone
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/world-banks-bad-business-sierra-leone>, Sri
Lanka <http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/world-banks-bad-business-sri-lanka>
and the Philippines
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/world-banks-bad-business-philippines> –
has yielded similar results: sharp increases in foreign investments and
land-grabbing in a bid to appear more ‘business friendly’.

Further, Mousseau said, arrangements such as the Association Agreement
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/docs_autres_institutions/commission_europeenne/com/2013/0290/COM_COM%282013%290290%28PAR2%29_EN.pdf>
between the European Union and Ukraine offer glimpses into an agricultural
future steered by corporate interests.

“Until now, Ukraine had banned the use of GMOs in the agriculture sector,”
Mousseau stated. “So when we anaylsed the EU Association Agreement we were
surprised by article 404, which states very clearly that both parties agree
to expand the use of biotechnologies.”

Such clauses, experts say, could strengthen existing initiatives such as
Monsanto’s Ukraine-based ‘Grain-basket of the Future
<http://monsantoblog.com/2013/12/13/monsanto-ukraine-launching-social-development-program/>’
project (which offers 25,000-dollar loans to rural farmers) and Cargill’s
200-million-dollar stake in UkrLandFarming, the eighth largest land
cultivator in the world.

These developments give weight to the title of OI’s report, ‘Walking on the
West Side’, a reference to the role of Western interests in Ukraine’s
unfolding political crisis.

“It is necessary to see this in context of the U.S.– Russia struggle over
Ukraine,” Joel Kovel, U.S. scholar and author of over 20 books on
international politics, told IPS.

“Geostrategic politics and neoliberal economics fit together within the
overall plan …in which global finance capital under American control and
neoconservative leadership imposes austerity, seeks dominion over the
easternmost portion of Europe, and continues the policy of encircling
Russia,” he stated.

*Editing by: Kitty Stapp*

*The writer can be contacted at kanyaldalmeida@gmail.com
<kanyaldalmeida@gmail.com>*