New Study Promotes Agenda 21-Style “Land Grabs”

Activist Post – by Kevin Samson

When one thinks of “redistribution of wealth,” one would typically understand that to mean a system designed to take from the wealthy and give to the poor. Controversial in its own right. However, with the United Nations’ Agenda 21 it’s even worse: the redistribution of wealth means taking resources from poorer populations and opening up those resources for wealthy private interests to collude with government – fascism, essentially.

A shockingly honest new study from the Institute of Physics (IOP) journal Environmental Research Letters entitled “Food appropriation through large scale land acquisitions” makes the case for literally disenfranchising local populations in service to the greater multi-national good through “land grabs” – a hallmark of all Agenda 21 propaganda.

Agenda 21’s “Green Mask” of sustainability and rectifying global hunger is being used to hoodwink compassionate people’s interest in the environment, as well as pander to legitimate concerns over dwindling food and water resources. In reality, Agenda 21 is an enormously complex and multi-faceted stealth program that is creeping into every corner of the world, including the U.S., which is thought to be immune from land grabs due to well-established property rights.  However, one look at our Agenda 21 archives is enough to dispel that notion.

Any place where Agenda 21 has arrived under the following snapshot of its methods of intrusion, it has resulted in loss of land, loss of resources and anything but a balanced re-distribution of that which is appropriated:

Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, STAR Sustainable Communities, Green jobs, Green Building Codes, “Going Green,” Alternative Energy, Local Visioning, facilitators, regional planning, historic preservation, conservation easements, development rights, sustainable farming, comprehensive planning, growth management, consensus. (Source – Agenda 21 in One Easy Lesson)

Nevertheless, the findings which are being published by the Institute of Physics state simply:

Crops grown on “land-grabbed” areas in developing countries could have the potential to feed an extra 100 million people worldwide, a new study has shown.

The improved infrastructure brought about by foreign investment could increase the productivity of subsistence farmlands in countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and could mean these lands can feed at least 300 million people around the world. This is compared to about 190 million people that could be fed if the land was left tended to by the local population.

The following graphic is offered:

Figure 3. Number of people who could be fed by the acquired land in the case of ‘balanced diet’, assuming a 50% biofuel use for oil palm and sugarcane, and considering different yield gap closure scenarios. (Calculations are based on land deals data as reported by Land Matrix 2013 dataset, accessed on 20 June 2013).

On top of the zero respect for the sovereignty of these areas, and the suggestion that they are all but obligated to outsource their production to “foreign governments and business,” we need to consider who might be at the helm of such an initiative.

The press release focuses on the notion that modern techniques, industrialized agricultural methods, and land-grab deals are the potential saviors in the equation to provide food for the planet. Naturally, when we hear about “modern techniques” we are really talking about biotech, and Monsanto primarily. The biotech industry continues to assert that modern-day farming must be driven by genetic modification in order to provide more consistent crop production in ever higher yields, thus we can conclude that this is the direction that will be taken with the stolen acquired land. 

When it comes to food production, it is one of the many myths of GMO; GMOs do not provide more food, but do offer Big Ag companies increased profits on the need for more pesticides, herbicides, and patented seeds – all of which are guaranteed to show up on this newly acquired land. For purely propaganda purposes we are often shown images of starving people in Third World countries who presumably need to be saved by corporate conglomerates. However, there are many real-world examples (and studies) illustrating the exact opposite.

If we dig a bit deeper into the IOP statements, we see statistics that form a lot of moving parts showing potentialities and the people who “could be fed,” but it’s the conclusions which unequivocally state the goals hidden in plain sight:

The results also revealed that the most targeted countries for land grabs are Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and the former Sudan. Altogether, these nations account for around 82 per cent of the total food calories that can be produced by acquired croplands worldwide.

It has been reported in previous studies that around 32.9 million hectares of land have been acquired by large-scale international investors for different purposes. A total of 22 million hectares were acquired for agriculture.

The authors, Maria Cristina Rulli from Politecnico di Milano and Paolo D’Odorico from University of Virginia, said: “Our study has provided a comprehensive assessment of the amount of food that can potentially be produced in land acquired by foreign investors in countries such as Sudan and Indonesia.”

Accordingly, “Policy makers need to be aware that if this food were used to feed the local populations it would be sufficient to abate malnourishment in each of these countries even without investments aiming at the closure of the yield gap. Such investments would lead to substantial improvements in crop yields mainly in African countries.

“At the moment there are still open questions which would help inform the debate over what happens to acquired land such as, what happens to food produced? Is it shipped abroad? Were these lands already used for agriculture prior to the acquisition, and (if so) for the cultivation of what crops? With what yields? Answers to these questions would allow us to quantify the decrease in food available to the local communities, and come up with management strategies to mitigate possible negative impacts on the local communities of large scale land acquisition.” (emphasis added)

This is nothing short of an open admission that foreign governments and international investors are seeking the most profitable ways to get their claws into sovereign territories, while using the “Green Mask” to shroud their true intentions.

When this is fully understood, we can look at the U.S. government’s pledge of billions of dollars to boost Africa’s infrastructure in a whole new light. Africa is, in fact, a multi-level resource, as is much of the developing world. The agreements that are being signed by these nations with multi-national corporations are at worst being coerced through UN guidelines, and at best deals with the devil initiated by petty government officials in developing areas. 

For additional specific mechanics behind these land grabs, I would refer you to the following articles:

• Agenda 21: Food Is The New Gold. Land Is The New Oil.
• UN BioTrade Turning Africa into Financial Resource for Global Governance
• UN Guidelines Use Corporations in African ‘Land Grab’

Full Institute of Physics report available here:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/6/064030/article

Source:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/iop-gc062414.php

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