Swedish land grab in Tanzania causes protests

In 2009 we, a group of researchers from Sweden and Norway, wrote an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter against a case of Swedish landgrabbing for biofuel in Tanzania. The Swedish company SEKAB claimed that they just targeted an unutilised state ranch, but we knew that the area was actually settled and used by small-scale farmers and pastoralists. In the month before some influential Swedish environmental researchers (several from Stockholm Environment Institute)  had written an opinion piece in Göteborgsposten that was very positive about such projects in Tanzania and biofuels in Africa more generally. They took an innocently environmentally friendly perspective, without discussing existing land rights and the role for African smallholders. I also debated on Swedish Radio with one of them.

Since then biofuel projects in Africa have been more and more criticised and there are few concerned environmentalists who believe that biofuel from plantations in Africa is the solution to the energy problem. More and more people also realise that there is a conflict between food security and large biofuel plantations.

The Swedish project we crtiticised has also had its ups and downs since then. I have tried to report on it successively in my blog in Swedish: widgren.blogspot.com . The development of this project until late 2011 has also been summarised by Kjell Havnevik, who is now following the project in his research. One of the most problemtic plans was to convert larges tracts of miombo forest in Rufiji to plantations. The net less of CO2 to the athmosphere from the clearing of this forest incuding its large root system would probably easy outweigh the environmental gain from Swedish cars driving on ethanol. The project is now focussed on some 8000 hectares sugar plantation outside Bagamoyo for sugar production - no longer biofuels more than marginally.

In August last year the Resettlement Action Plan for the project disclosed a conservative estimate of the number of villages and inhabitants that would have be resettled  (=evicted).  During the last month the reports about the problems in the area have started to come out from Tanzanian media. This link in Swahili describes how the Swedish company now called  Agro Eco Energy has come in conflict with the neighbouring national park, a problem which has been taken up by the Tanzanian parliament. Other reports tell that "Villagers cry over land grabbing" .The villagers claim to have had a previous court case which shows their right to the land. Read also "Dubious land sale in Bagamoyo creates dispute between villagers and investor"

The letter of protest from the villagers of Makaani Gana, which is about to be bulldozed for the plantation(including houses and a mosque)  can be found here in Swahili.  The google translation is rather confusing so please: if anyone out there can help me with translation I would be grateful.

It would be interesting to hear the same environmental scientists that in March 2009 were so positive about biofuel in Tanzania to comment this four years later. No longer seems sugarcane converted to biofuel for Swedish cars be so hopeful. And it is no longer possible to claim that the land is unutilised. Swedish development aid, companies and innocent environmental scientists ought to study Swedish agrarian history to understand how respect for customary rights and long use of the land formed the basis for the present transparent system of land rights in Sweden.

Added March 28th:
see also "4,000 Coast villagers face land loss to investor"

Swedish Black Earth?

(originally posted March 2013, updated October 2013)

I’ve put together a table with what I think are the main Swedish land investments in Russia and Ukraine. In doing this, I ran into some of the known difficulties associated with monitoring the phenomenon of large-scale land-acquisition (as well discussed in Visser and Spoor, 2011, “Land-grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia,” Journal of Peasant Studies). For example what can we call Swedish when shareholders come from the whole world? To make things more difficult, these companies appear to restructure and change shareholders faster than you can say “large-scale land acquisition.” Another question is how can we keep track of how large land areas the individual companies have when public promises to scale up aren’t always implemented or reported on by the company or the media? 

Take for example Redland Farming, which is listed in Grain’s recent overview as a Swedish company with up to 180 000 hectares in Russia. Concerning the size of the operation, the Redland farming web-site states the following:

“Today, Redland Farming is mainly a grain producer, but is developing quickly within the vegetable- and animal segments. The company is controlling and financing agricultural operations harvesting on around 3 000 hectares and storing 200 cows (100 milk cows), divided into two production clusters.”

Of course Redland Farming could have more land and they just have not gotten around to updating their web-site or perhaps they ran into difficulties in scaling-up. As for the ownership, Planeta Holding is listed as a majority share-holder in the operation with 64% of the shares. According to their web-site Planeta Holding is based in Singapore, but the Planeta Holding web-site states that it is copyright Lupus Holding, and Lupus is an investment company owned by a Swede (Gunnar Nilsson). Both the Lupus Holding site and the Planeta Holding site link to Redland Farming, so for the time being I will consider this “Swedish.” 

Another example is Trigon Agri, which is listed on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stock exchange. Grain calls Trigon Agri a Danish company because it is based in Denmark. However shareholders from the US and Sweden appear to have a plurality, with the Swedish shareholders slightly edging out the Americans (I’m including Nordea Finland as Swedish, since the Nordea Finland web-site states that it is wholly owned by Nordea which is, of course, the largest bank in Sweden). Swedish entities similarly appear to own a plurality of shares in Swedish-based Alpcot Agro (Agrokultura). Black Earth Farming does not list its shareholders on its web-site, but Swedish Kinnevik is one of the major shareholders. Grain Alliance AB with 40 000 hectares in Ukraine, is listed as an American investment in the Grain report, but the company was bought out by Swedish Claesson Anderzen, a private Swedish property company based in Kalmar. Raw Agro was listed in the Grain report as being 30% owned by Swedish Kinnevik, but the Raw Agro web-site states that the Swedish investors were bought out in 2011. 

The point of all this is not to argue that Grain has got it all wrong. I rather want to illustrate how difficult the task is to monitor these investments, and make an argument that scholars in source countries can make a contribution by keeping track of locally available details. Plus, I wanted to highlight the difficulty of talking about national origins of land investments in a globalized economy. What makes something Swedish? Being listed on the Swedish stock exchange, majority or a plurality Swedish ownership, being based in Sweden, Swedish management? 

Anyway, if you add up the total hectarage of the seven companies with links to Sweden that are investing in land in the former Soviet Union, you get a total of 924300 ha. Sweden itself, according to the Statistics Sweden, possesses 3431336 million ha of agricultural land, so these four companies alone have a land bank that is 27% of the Swedish cultivated area. This, I think, puts into perspective how this type of farming is really a fundamentally different business model compared to farming in Sweden. 

Am I missing something? Let me know. 

Company		country of investment		year of start up or Swedish involvement	Specialization			size of land holding ha
Black Earth Farming	Russia		2005			grains, oilseeds	318000
Alpcot Agro / Agrokulura	Russia and Ukraine		2006			grains, oilseeds, and dairy	281300
Trigon Agri / Trigon Dairy	Russia and Ukraine		2006			grains and dairy	180000
Claesson & Anderzen AB / Grain Alliance AB	Ukraine		2008			grains, oilseeds	40000
Volga Farming	Russia		2007			grains, oilseeds	67000
Redland Farming	Russia		2010			grains, vegetables, milk	3000
AgroRegion	Ukraine		2007			grains, milk, pork	35000
						Total:	924300