• #Pro-savana

    Vision

    Improve the livelihood of inhabitants of #Nacala_Corridor through inclusive and sustainable agricultural and regional development.

    Missions

    1. Improve and modernise agriculture to increase productivity and production, and diversify agricultural production.

    2. Create employment through agricultural investment and establishment of a supply chain.

    Objective

    Create new agricultural development models, taking into account the natural environment and socio-economic aspects, and seeking market-orientated agricultural/rural/regional development with a competitive edge.

    Principles of ProSAVANA

    1. ProSAVANA will be aligned with the vision and objectives of the national agricultural development strategy of Mozambique, the “Strategy Plan for the Agricultural Sector Development – 2011 – 2020 (PEDSA)”,

    2. ProSAVANA supports Mozambican farmers in order to contribute to poverty-reduction, food security and nutrition,

    3. Activities of ProSAVANA, in particular those involving the private sector, will be designed and implemented in accordance with Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI) and Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests,

    4. Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security of Mozambique (MASA) and Local Government, in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), will strengthen dialogue and involvement of civil society and other appropriate parties,

    5. Appropriate consideration will be given for mitigation of the environmental and social impacts, which might be provided through the activities under ProSAVANA.

    Approaches of ProSAVANA

    1. Incorporate the results of relevant studies on the natural conditions and socio-economic situations, to support the establishment of appropriate agricultural development models,

    2. Increase agricultural productivity and production through appropriate measures, including improvement of farming systems, access to agricultural extension services including techniques and quality/quantity of inputs, value chain system and expansion of farmland,

    3. Promote diversification of agricultural production, based on research results to increase profitability,

    4. Provide opportunities to change from subsistence agriculture into a sustainable agriculture, with respect given to the farmers´ sovereignty,

    5. Strengthen the capacity and the competitiveness of farmers and farmers’ organisations,

    6. Enhance the enabling environment to promote responsible investments and activities, aiming to establish a win-win relationship between small-scale farmers and agribusiness firms,

    7. Promote and strengthen local leading farmers to disseminate and scale-up development impacts,

    8. Establish regional agricultural clusters and develop value chain systems,

    9. Promote public and private partnership as one of the driving forces for inclusive and sustainable agricultural development.

    http://www.prosavana.gov.mz
    #Pro_savana #land_grabbing #terres #Mozambique #accaparement_de_terres

    ping @odilon

    Apparemment, le programme a été arrêté avant d’être implémenté.
    Programme qui avait été promu par #Lula

    • What Happened to the Biggest Land Grab in Africa? Searching for #ProSavana in Mozambique

      What if you threw a lavish party for foreign investors, and no one came? By all accounts, that is what’s happening in Mozambique’s Nacala Corridor, the intended site for Africa’s largest agricultural development scheme – or land grab, depending on your perspective.

      The ProSavana project, a Brazilian-and-Japanese-led development project, was supposed to be turning Mozambique’s fertile savannah lands in the north into an export zone, replicating Brazil’s success taming its own savannah – the cerrado – and transforming it into industrial mega-farms of soybeans. The vision, hatched in 2009, but only revealed to Mozambicans in 2013, called for 35 million hectares (nearly 100 million acres) of “underutilized” land to be converted by Brazilian agribusiness into soybean plantations for cheaper export to China and Japan.

      In my two weeks in Mozambique, including one week in the Nacala Corridor, I had a hard time finding evidence of any such transformation. It was easy, though, to find outrage at a plan seen by many in the region as a secret land grab. That resistance, which has evolved into a tri-national campaign in Japan, Brazil, and Mozambique to stop ProSavana, is one of the reasons the project is a currently a dud.

      The new face of South-South investment?

      I came to look at ProSavana because, out of all the large-scale projects I studied over the course of the last year, this one sounded almost plausible. It wasn’t started by some fly-by-night venture capitalist, growing a biofuel crop he’d never produced commercially for a market that barely existed. That’s what I saw in Tanzania, and such failed land grabs litter the African landscape.

      ProSavana at least knew its investors: Brazil’s agribusiness giants. The planners also knew their technology: Brazil’s soybeans, which had adapted to the harsh tropical conditions of Brazil’s cerrado. And they knew their market: Japan’s and China’s hog farms and their insatiable appetite for feed, generally made with soybeans. That was already more than a lot of these grand schemes had going for them.

      I was also compelled by the sheer scale of the project. When first announced, ProSavana was to encompass 35 million hectares of land, an area the size of North Carolina. That would have made it the largest land acquisition in Africa.

      ProSavana also interested me because it was not the usual neo-colonial megaproject promoted by the Global North. It was a projection of Brazil’s agro-export prowess. This was South-South investment, the new wave of development in a multipolar world. Wouldn’t Brazil do this differently, I wondered, with the kind of strong developmental focus that had characterized the country’s ascendance under the leadership of the left-leaning Workers’ Party?

      ProSavana’s premise was that the soil and climate in the Nacala Corridor of Mozambique were similar to those found in the cerrado, so technology could be easily adapted to tame a region inhospitable to agriculture.

      Someone should have gone there before they issued the press releases.

      It turns out that the two regions differ dramatically. The cerrado had poor soils, which technology was able to address. That’s also why it had few farmers, and those that were there could be moved by Brazil’s then-military dictatorship. The Nacala Corridor, by contrast, has good soils, which is precisely why it is the most densely-populated part of rural Mozambique. (If there are good lands, you can bet civilization has discovered them and is farming them.)

      Mozambique also has a democratic government, forged in an independence movement rooted in peasant farmers’ struggle for land rights. So the country has one of the stronger land laws in Africa, which grants use rights to farmers who have been farming land for ten years or more.

      The disconnect between the claims ProSavana was making to its investors and the reality of the situation reached almost laughable proportions. Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco led sales visits to Mozambique, organized by Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, which had put together the agribusiness-friendly draft “Master Plan” that was leaked to Mozambican civil society organizations in March 2013. Brazil’s biggest farmers came looking for thousands of hectares of land, only to find three disappointments: they couldn’t own land in Mozambique; what land they could lease was by no means empty; and it was far from the ports, with no decent roads to transport their soybeans. Brazil’s soybean mega-farmers packed up their giant combines and went back to the cerrado, where there are still millions of hectares of undeveloped land.

      A kinder, gentler ProSavana

      There are a few large soybean farms in Gurue, producing for the domestic poultry industry; but nothing like the export boom promised by ProSavana. According to Americo Uaciquete of ProSavana’s Nampula office, Brazilian farmers came expecting 40,000 hectares free and clear. He told me no investor could expect that in the Nacala Corridor. The only foreign investors who will farm there, he said, are those willing to take 2,000 hectares and involve local farmers.

      To me, that sounded like a very quick surrender on the ProSavana battlefield. Couldn’t the Mozambican government open larger swaths of land?

      “Not without a gun,” Uaciquete said, clearly rejecting that path. “We are not going to impose the Brazilian model here.” He went on to describe ProSavana as a support program for small-scale farmers, based on its two non-investment components: research into improved locally adapted seeds, and extension services to improve productivity.

      In Maputo, the ProSavana Directorate did its best to polish up the new, development-friendly ProSavana. Jusimere Mourao, of Japan’s cooperation agency, had it down best. She lamented that ProSavana was “poorly timed” because its “announcement” (a leak) “coincided” with international concerns about land grabbing. Hmmm….

      After taking civil society concerns into account, she said, the program had issued a new “concept note” and the Master Plan is under revision. “Small and medium producers are the main beneficiaries of ProSavana,” she said. “We have no intention of promoting the taking of their land. It would be a crime.” It’s not about promoting foreign investment, she assured me; that is up to the Mozambican government.

      The turnaround was stunning, and welcome, if not quite believable. It certainly had not quieted the coalition calling for an end to ProSavana until farmers and civil society groups are consulted on the agricultural development plan for the Nacala Corridor.

      Luis Sitoe, Economic Adviser to the Minister of Agriculture, smirked when I told him I’d been in the region researching ProSavana. “Did you find anything?” For him, ProSavana had failed.

      But lest I think anything profound had been learned from that experience, he reassured me that the Mozambican government remains firmly committed to relying on large-scale foreign investment to address its agricultural underdevelopment.

      He pulled out a two-inch-thick binder to show me he was serious. It was the project proposal for the Lurio River Valley Development Project, a 200,000-hectare irrigation scheme right there in the northern Nacala Corridor. Was it part of ProSavana? Absolutely not. Had the communities been consulted on this ambitious project along the heavily populated river valley?

      “Absolutely not,” said Vicente Adriano, research director at UNAC, Mozambique’s national farmers’ union, which had just presented its own agricultural development plan, based on the country’s three million family farmers.

      The ProSavana directorate is still promising a new Master Plan for the project in early 2015. So it would be a mistake to think that ProSavana is dead. Large-scale land deals certainly aren’t, however they are branded. Investors may just be waiting for the Mozambican government to bring more to the table than just promotional brochures. Things like land, which turns out to be rather important for a successful land grab. In the Nacala Corridor, that land is anything but unoccupied.

      https://foodtank.com/news/2014/12/what-happened-to-the-biggest-land-grab-in-africa-searching-for-prosavana-i

  • The victory of Mozambican farmers against the soya empire

    In 2011 the Mozambican government launched Africa’s largest agro-industrial development plan. The so-called #ProSavana aimed to turn 14 million hectares of land in the #Nacala corridor, in the north of the country, into a huge #monoculture, mainly soybean for the Chinese market. The development of the area would have been entrusted to Brazilian entrepreneurs coming directly from Mato Grosso.

    When they realized they would have lost their ancestral lands, local farmers put up a great mobilisation, which proved very successful.

    https://www.internazionale.it/video/2018/05/16/mozambican-farmers-soya
    #résistance #Mozambique #agriculture #soja #Chinafrique #Chine #Brésil #terres #accaparement_de_terres #vidéo

    • #Soyalism

      I n a world struck by climate change and overpopulation, food production control is increasingly becoming a huge business for a handful of giant corporations. Following the industrial production chain of pork, from China to Brazil through the United States and Mozambique, the documentary describes the enormous concentration of power in the hands of these Western and Chinese companies. This movement is putting out of business hundreds of thousands of small producers and transforming permanently entire landscapes. Launched in United States at the end of the Seventies, the system has been exported across the world, especially in large-populated countries such as China. From waste-lagoons in North Carolina to soybeans monoculture developed in the Amazon rainforest to feed animals, the movie describes how the expansion of this process is jeopardizing the social and environmental balance of the planet.

      https://www.soyalism.com

      #film #documentaire

      Trailer :
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwwAqllgwYg

      #Stefano_Liberti

    • La vittoria dei contadini del Mozambico contro l’impero della soia

      “In Mozambico non c’è abbastanza terra, abbiamo già conflitti tra di noi. Se verranno gli investitori stranieri, i conflitti peggioreranno. La terra appartiene ai mozambicani”, dice Costa Estevão, presidente dell’unione contadina di Nampula.

      Nel 2011 il governo mozambicano ha lanciato il più grande piano di sviluppo agroindustriale dell’Africa. Il ProSavana mirava a trasformare 14 milioni di ettari di terreno in monocolture da esportazione. L’area interessata era il corridoio di Nacala, nel nord del paese.

      Il suo sviluppo sarebbe stato affidato a imprenditori brasiliani venuti dal Mato Grosso, lo stato del Brasile trasformato negli anni ottanta nel principale produttore di soia al mondo. I contadini mozambicani, informati che avrebbero perso le proprie terre, hanno messo in piedi una grande mobilitazione e hanno vinto.

      Questo video, disponibile anche in inglese, è stato realizzato con il sostegno del Pulitzer center on crisis reporting. È uno spin-off di Soyalism, un documentario di Stefano Liberti ed Enrico Parenti sull’industria globale della carne e le monocolture correlate in giro per il pianeta.

      https://www.internazionale.it/video/2018/05/16/contadini-mozambico-soia
      #vidéo

  • Impunité des multinationales : les victimes de ProSavana au Mozambique (...) - CCFD-Terre Solidaire
    https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/infos/rse/traite-onu/impunite-des-5949

    Erika Mendes, est chargée de plaidoyer à Justiça Ambiental au Mozambique, organisation partenaire du CCFD-Terre Solidaire. Elle sera présente à Genève du 23 au 27 octobre 2017 pour défendre un #traité onusien contre l’impunité des #multinationales. Elle suit de près le projet #ProSavana et nous livre son témoignage en avant-première.

    Le projet ProSavana a été lancé en 2009 par les gouvernements du #Mozambique, du Brésil et du Japon. Il a été présenté comme un moyen de moderniser l’#agriculture au #Mozambique. Pourtant, quelques années plus tard, les violations des droits humains sont nombreuses.

    #Expropriations et #pollution

    Financé par le Brésil et le Japon, ce projet doit se déployer le long du « Corridor de #Nacala » dans le centre et le nord du pays. Dans cette région vivent de nombreuses communautés de paysans, soit 4 millions de familles, qui pratiquent l’agriculture familiale. L’arrivée d’investisseurs souhaitant développer l’agriculture industrielle suscite de nombreuses craintes. Les paysans ont peur d’être expropriés au profit de la mise en culture de parcelles dédiées à la #monoculture. Pour la plupart d’entre eux, une expropriation les priverait de moyens d’existence.

    Le processus a déjà commencé dans la province de Nampula. L’usage intensif des #pesticides et #fertilisants_chimiques a parallèlement entraîné la pollution des ressources en #eau et une dégradation des #sols.

    #terres

  • Les accapareurs de terres du couloir de #Nacala
    http://www.grain.org/fr/article/entries/5138-les-accapareurs-de-terres-du-couloir-de-nacala

    Les paysans du nord du #Mozambique se battent pour garder leurs #terres, alors que les gouvernements et les entreprises étrangères s’emploient à réaliser de vastes projets agro-industriels de façon de plus en plus agressive. On soutient aux populations que ces projets leur seront bénéfiques. Mais jusqu’à présent, l’expérience de l’investissement étranger en matière d’agriculture a été désastreuse pour le pays.

    Ce rapport concerne les entreprises qui sont déjà en train de s’installer dans le couloir de Nacala, une zone désignée en priorité par le gouvernement pour le développement de l’#agrobusiness. Ces entreprises, dont l’organisation passe généralement par des #paradis_fiscaux offshore et qui sont souvent liées aux élites politiques mozambicaines, s’emparent des terres et accaparent les richesses du pays, d’une manière qui n’est pas sans rappeler la période du #colonialisme.

    #accaparement #cartographie
    http://www.grain.org/media/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSI1MjAxNS8wMi8xOC8wMl8wNV8zM181MTlfTmFjYWxhX3N0cmF0ZWd5X3BsYW4uc