Loss of land and food to plantations

Cash crops and the degradation of agricultural land

Time and again, we find that the intensive nature of plantation agriculture has resulted in the over-exploitation of the land used to grow cash crops. In Africa, for instance, vast tracts of land which are suitable for growing grazing grasses or trees, but little else, have been torn up to make way for cotton or peanut plantations. As Lappe and Collins report,

“The soil becomes rapidly poor in humus and loses its adhesiveness. The wind, quite strong in the dry season, then easily erodes the soils. Soil deterioration leads to declining crops and, consequently, to an enormous expansion of cultivated land, often onto marginal soils.” [25]

Once again, the Sahel region provides a case in point. Thus, where land is under peanuts, a minimum six years of fallow is recommended if the soil is not to degenerate. Without that fallow, such essential minerals as potassium, phosphorous and magnesium do not have sufficient time to build up again in the soil. Indeed, as Franke and Chasin point out for the Caramance region of Senegal,

“it has been estimated that after only two successive years of peanut growing, there is a loss of 30 percent of the soil’s organic matter and 60 percent of the colloidal humus. In two successive years of peanut planting, the second year’s yield will be from 20 to 40 percent lower than the first.”

They go on to explain:

“As the organic matter diminishes, the soil’s capacity to retain water is lessened and there is more susceptibility to drought. Without reserves of moisture, the soil dries out and the harmattan or desert wind can blow it away. This is much less of a problem when millet is planted. After harvesting, the stems and roots of millet are left in the ground, acting as a protection against erosion. But the ground on which peanuts are harvested is left completely bare. The shells which are underground are harvested by uprooting. The soil is loosened and the wind will carry away the finest and most important elements.” [26]

Unfortunately, the pressure to increase the production of cash crops has led to the widespread violation of fallow periods throughout the Sahel. Moreover, with the nomadic herdsmen of the North now being pushed further and further away from the peanut growing areas, natural fertilisers in the form of cow dung are becoming increasingly hard to obtain: so, too, artificial fertilisers are proving too expensive for the majority of farmers to buy. Consequently, many peanut growing areas are now both over-exploited and under-fertilised. The result has been a rapid deterioration in the soil quality of the region. Indeed, according to the Prefect of the Maradi District of Niger, some soils in his area “can be considered totally depleted”.

In Brazil, coffee has played a similar role to that of peanuts in the Sahel. On that score, it is worth quoting at some length from George Borgstrom’s book, The Hungry Planet. He writes:

“The almost predatory exploitations by the coffee planters have ruined a considerable portion of Brazil’s soils. In many areas, these abandoned coffee lands are so ruined that they can hardly ever be restored to crop production. In others, a varying portion of the topsoil has been removed, or the humus content of the soil has been seriously reduced. In most regions, a mere one-tenth now remains of the amount of humus present when coffee cultivation was started. Therefore, the coffee plantations have always been on the march, grabbing new land and leaving behind eroded or impoverished soils. Coffee has climbed even higher along the slopes of the Brazilian high plateau and has finally reached up there. In search of new soils to take the place of those that have been destroyed, coffee-growing moved towards the south and west as well as into entirely new states.

Each time, however, the coffee plantations were forced to move to less favourable regions, where especially the frost risks have turned out to be considerable. They have also been compelled to abandon the fertile red soil, terra rosa, where uninterrupted production is possible from forty to sixty years. Poor sandy soils have been put under cultivation where the lifespan of the coffee bushes is only half as long. As a last resort, still poorer soils in the state of Espirito Santo have been used, where the bushes render reasonable yields merely for eight years or so.

This march of the coffee plantations over the wide expanses of Brazil has been likened to a giant wave which has now reached the River Parana, where cultivation takes place under much more unfavourable conditions compared to the time when the coffee bushes flourished in the vast Paraiba Valley, west of Rio de Janeiro. Here, the pioneers burned enormous forests in order to obtain room for the largest possible number of coffee bushes. Behind them, the coffee-thirsty peoples of the world have left poor pastures. Here and there a grove of eucalyptus trees, imported from Australia, may be seen. The humus has not stood up against the strain. The soil has deteriorated and has subsequently been damaged on quite a scale in a man-induced erosion. Centuries of forest growth would be required to restore an adequate humus layer.” [27]

Food for what?

What do the rural peasants of the Third World get in return for the food they cultivate and export? The answer is precious little. The bulk of the foreign exchange earned by developing countries goes on luxury items which only the élite can afford. The point is well made by Lappe and Collins with respect to those countries worst hit by the catastrophic Sahelian drought. Thus, they write:

“Much of the foreign exchange is used to enable government bureaucrats and other better-off urban workers to live an imported lifestyle – refrigerators, air-conditioners, refined sugar, alcoholic beverages, tobacco and so on. In 1974, about 30 percent of the foreign exchange earned by Senegal went for just such items. The peanut exports annually account for one third of the national budget of Senegal – but 47.2 percent of the budget goes on the salaries of the government bureaucrats. Between 1961 and the worst drought year, 1971, Niger, a country with marked malnutrition and a life expectancy of only thirty-eight years, quadrupled its cotton production and tripled that of peanuts. But $20 million in foreign exchange was then used up importing clothing, over nine times the amount earned by exporting raw cotton. Over $1 million went for private cars and over $4 million for gasoline and tyres. In only three years, 1967-1970, the number of private cars increased by over 50 percent, most them driven by the miniscule elite in the capital. Over $1 million was spent to import alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.” [28]

Sadly, that pattern of consumption is typical of those Third World countries which are committed to ‘western-style’ development.

Cash crops and rising food prices

For the rural poor, the problem is compounded by the tendency of cash-crop cultivation to push up the price of even locally grown foodstuffs, thus widening still further the gap between the peasant and his next meal.

In Brazil, for example, we learn that the widespread introduction of soybeans led to a dramatic reduction in the cultivation of such staple food crops as feijaos (or blackbeans) and corn. The result? In less than a year, between the end of 1972 and August 1973, blackbean prices rose 275 percent. So, too, the growing shortage of corn led to a dramatic rise in the price of animal feedstuffs: consequently, between 1970 and 1972, the price of meat rose by 60 percent and that of chicken by a third. [29]

In most developing countries, such a rise in the price of meat would only have affected the affluent elite: in Brazil, however, meat was – at that time, though no longer – still a staple food for the majority of the population. Summing up the overall effect of the introduction of the soybean, a report by the French government’s Centre for External Trade concluded:

“The consequences were that not only did a great price increase for the principal food products take place, but it also became necessary to import large quantities of foodstuffs.” [30]

In the Dominican Republic, reports Susan George, in her book How the Other Half Dies, sugar plantations have played a similar role in raising the price of local foodstuffs to that played by soybeans in Brazil.

“In the past twenty years, the amount of land under sugar cane has doubled, and now stands at about 25 percent of the total acreage; while food production per capita has decreased. Food prices are twice as high as ten years ago, and many Dominican families are only eating one meal a day. A 1969 study by a Columbia University doctor showed that over half the sample of 5,500 Dominicans were anaemic, and showed ‘chronic malnutrition since birth’.” [31]

Behind those price rises lie two trends. Firstly, as we have seen, the increasing amount of land put under cash crops for export has led to a reduction in the cultivation of local foodstuffs – and hence (the law of supply and demand being what it is) to a rise in their price. Secondly, the increasing costs of production – an inevitable concomitant of modernising agriculture – must mean that food prices rise to cover those extra costs. As Susan George puts it:

“Expensive technology will produce expensive goods – including higher priced food. This is particularly true when Western-style, highly energy-intensive growing methods are used. Someone is going to pay the cost of such items as spare parts, imported fertiliser, sophisticated distribution systems and just plain energy. If you then want to keep food prices down for the urban consumers, you will have to reduce the prices and wages you pay rural producers and labourers. You can also simply let prices follow ‘market’ forces and fix themselves at the level commensurate with the technology that went into producing the food. If this places the food beyond the reach of the poorest consumers, too bad. You will sell to the upper classes or to foreigners.” [32]

Looking towards the future, that second trend is certain to become more and more pronounced – particularly in those areas which have been brought under irrigation. Bruce Stokes of the Washington-based WorldWatch Institute writes,

“As farmers are driven up the rising cost curve one of the inherent contradictions of large-scale irrigation programmes will become apparent. Ultimately, food prices will have to increase to enable farmers to pay for new water projects.” [33]

In that respect, we would argue, the building of further large-scale irrigation schemes can only serve to exacerbate the problems of hunger and malnutrition . Undoubtedly, more food will be grown (at least in the short-term) but it will be food which few Third World peasants will be able to afford – assuming, of course, that the food grown is actually intended for local consumption rather than for export. Indeed, many of the irrigation schemes now being planned will only prove economic if food prices are increased substantially.

Thus a recent study, undertaken for the US Department of Agriculture, estimated that the price of sorghum grown in Texas – whose groundwater reserves are, as we have seen, being rapidly depleted – would have to rise by $2.90 to pay for the increasing cost of pumping water. Since sorghum is largely fed to beef, a rise in the price of meat would rapidly follow. Elsewhere, another study concluded that the High Plain Ogdalla Aquifer Project in the Southwestern US could only be justified if the price of grain increased by a third by the end of the century. At that price, how many more people will join the ranks of those existing millions who cannot afford to eat?

To conclude, if large-scale irrigation schemes in the Third World appear justified, in spite of their terrible consequences for the local inhabitants of the area in which they are built, it is surely because we are told that it is the only way, in today’s aberrant conditions, that they can possible be fed.

As we have already seen, however, land which is brought under perennial irrigation in hot dry areas will almost always become waterlogged and salinised, and the reservoirs will rapidly silt up. We have now shown that little of the land which is irrigated will, in any case, be made use of to produce food for local inhabitants. On the contrary, most of it will be exported to the already well-fed (if malnourished) peoples of the Industrial World or else made available to local peasants at a price they cannot conceivably afford. Once it has served that purpose, it is likely to be so degraded that it will be of little use for further food production. On that score alone, further large-scale water development schemes are little more than a recipe for starvation and hunger.

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References

1. S. George, How the Other Half Dies, Penguin, London, 1977, p.39.

2. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, Food First: The Myth of Scarcity, Souvenir Press, London, 1977, p.41.

3. B. Dinham and C. Hines, Agribusiness in Africa, Earth Resources Research Publications, 1983, p.187.

4. B. Dinham and C. Hines, op.cit. 1983, Table A1, p.187. See also: S. George, op.cit. 1977, p.39.

5. B. Dinham and C. Hines, op.cit. 1983, p.125.

6. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.23.

7. Ibid, p.217.

8. Ibid, p.217. See also: S. George, op.cit. 1977, pp.176-177.

9. B. Dinham and C. Hines, op.cit. 1983, p.31.

10. Ibid, p.104.

11. Quoted by F. Mounier, ‘The Senegal River Scheme: Development for Whom?’ in E. Goldsmith and N. Hildyard (Eds), The Social and Ecological Effects of Large Dams, Volume II: Case Studies, Wadebridge Ecological Centre, Worthyvale Manor, Camelford, Cornwall, U.K. 1984.

12. F. Mounier, op.cit. 1984.

13. R. Franke and B. Chasin, Seeds of Famine, Allanheld, Osmun and Co., 1980, p.192. Quoted by B. Dinham and C. Hines, op.cit. 1983, p.150.

14. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.199.

15. Ibid, p.201.

16. ‘The Sahel: Today’s disaster area . . . tomorrow’s glorious garden’, To the Point International, October 5th, 1974. Quoted by F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.80.

17. B. Dinham and C. Hines, op.cit. 1983, p.32.

18. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.200.

19. Ibid, p.40.

20. R. Franke and B. Chasin, ‘Peasants, Peanuts Profits and Pastoralists’, The Ecologist, Vol. 11, No. 4, July/August 1981, p.161.

21. Ibid, p.165.

22. Ibid, p.166.

23. Ibid, p.164.

24. Ibid, p.166.

25. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.41.

26. R. Franke and B. Chasin, op.cit. 1981, p.162.

27. G. Borgstrom, The Hungry Planet, Collier Books, New York, 1967. Quoted by Andrew P. Vayda, ‘Plants Animals and Man’, Keynote address to the 28th Annual meeting of the Soil Conservation Society of America, Iowa, September 1973, p.7.

28. F. Moore Lappe and J. Collins, op.cit. 1977, p.77.

29. S. George, op.cit. 1977, p.93.

30. Quoted by S. George, op.cit. 1977, p.93.

31. S. George, op.cit. 1977, p.174.

32. Ibid, p.18.

33. Bruce Stokes, ‘Bread and Water: Growing Tomorrow’s Food’, Unpublished paper written for the Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC, Undated (circa. 1980), Section 1, p.2.