Ugh.....Big Corporate Food invades Ethiopia, enslaves farmers

[marmar]

:argh: :mad:



Ethiopian Farms Lure Investor Funds as Workers Live in Poverty
By Jason McLure


Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.

Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg.

The jobs pay less than the World Bank’s $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.

“My business is the third wave of outsourcing,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company’s dusty office in the western town of Gambella. “Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food.”

Companies and governments are buying or leasing African land after cereals prices almost tripled in the three years ended April 2008. Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Ethiopia alone have approved 1.4 million hectares of land allocations to foreign investors since 2004, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

Emergent Asset Management Ltd.’s African Agricultural Land Fund opened last year. On Nov. 23, Moscow-based Pharos Financial Advisors Ltd. and Dubai-based Miro Asset Management Ltd. announced the creation of a $350 million private equity fund to invest in agriculture in developing countries. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aeuJT_pSE68c&pos=11

[Greyhound]

1. Looting Africa has been the foundation of the global economy forever.

Nothing is more profitable than stealing necessities and selling them into a captive market.
:kick: & R

[Echo In Light]

2. K&R

[MisterP]

3. this story brought to you be the word "proletarianization"

I mean, don't they know Progress when they see it?

they must sacrifice themselves to the abstraction! just like the 1820s English weavers should've sacrificed themselves so the employers could go and put Bengali weavers out of business--instead of wrecking the Holy Technology "out of fear" (thank you E.P. Thompson)