The right to food in the context of large-scale land investment in Ethiopia

Abstract

Since the global food crises of 2007, smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and other rural groups in many developing countries have seen their access to land, water and forest resources being threatened and reduced due to the acquisition of those resources by other actors – acquisitions that may have been promoted by state policies. Taking up the case of Ethiopia, this article aims to explore the implications of large-scale agricultural investments for local food security and the right to food. The article argues that in the context of the recent and ongoing large-scale agricultural investments driven primarily by the state, the interpretation and realisation of the right to food becomes a politically contested issue and that such investments run counter to implementing the state’s obligation to protect local people’s access to and procurement of adequate food. It argues that the large-scale agricultural investments both condition and pervert the realisation of food security.

Keywords:

• Land rights
• land acquisitions
• food security
• right to food
• Ethiopia

Introduction

Across developing countries, poor people in rural areas have become increasingly vulnerable over the past decade due to the combined effects of environmental and climate change, widespread corporate and state land grabs, and a rural economy that offers limited opportunities for farm and non-farm livelihoods. Although land and water remain the most fundamental natural resources for most people in the countryside, the politically contested nature of land, land access and land quality has become even more important in the contemporary era of climate change and the global land rush. Taking up the case of Ethiopia, this article examines the implications of large-scale agricultural investments for food security and the right to food, and explores the contradictions of these investments with the state’s legal obligations to respect, protect and fulfil such rights. The article argues that in the context of the recent and ongoing large-scale, state-driven agricultural investments, the interpretation and realisation of the right to food becomes a politically contested issue, and that such investments run counter to advancing the implementation of the state’s obligation to protect local people’s access to and procurement of adequate food. It argues that the large-scale agricultural investments both condition and pervert the realisation of food security.

In many developing countries, access to land has always been critical to the people living (and producing) in rural areas, who largely depend on crop production, livestock, fisheries and forest resources for their livelihoods. In such a context, rural poverty closely relates to access to and control over land and other productive resources. Being critically important to rural livelihoods, inequalities in the control, distribution and productivity of land are among the key factors impeding rural growth and ensuring food security. Land is in fact much more than an economic resource and thus has a broader significance; this is particularly true for smallholder peasant farmers, pastoralists, and indigenous people, for whom land signifies a way of life and holds cultural significance. It is also an important political resource that establishes or challenges power relations between and among individuals, households, communities, and corporate and state actors.¹

Historically, issues of land contestation (revolving around multiple uses and users) are often complicated by the claims of powerful vested interests that lead to inequalities in access to and control over the resource, particularly along class, ethnicity and gender lines.² Over the past decade, the convergence of multiple global crises (food, energy, environmental, climate change and finance) has led to a renewed interest in agricultural land and other land-based resources.³ This growing interest in land resources, both domestic and transnational, has led to large-scale enclosures of agricultural, pastoral and forest land in many sub-Saharan African countries.⁴

Smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and other rural groups have seen their access to land, water and forest resources being threatened and reduced due to the acquisition of those resources by other actors – acquisitions that may have been promoted by state policies. While poor local communities are affected by the land investments, for the Ethiopian government, the investments provide an opportunity to enhance its territorial control over areas considered remote periphery,⁵ and have ‘contributed to greater elite power concentration and state hegemony’.⁶ As Lund and Boone suggest, ‘politics surrounding land institutions and land issues can be viewed as part and parcel of the processes of gathering authority over persons and resources, or state formation. Authority can be reproduced, extended and solidified in these ways’.⁷ Nevertheless, some of the large land deals in Ethiopia have not fully materialised, and the contracts of some of the leases have already been terminated, and the land restored to the federal land bank for other potential investors. As the anticipated economic benefits appear to have largely failed to materialise, it seems plausible to argue that land investments were more means to consolidate the state’s authority in the peripheral lowlands than strategies for improving the livelihoods of local communities in those areas.

Proponents of large-scale investment in agriculture argued for improving transparency and accountability with the hope that the anticipated benefits will be shared equitably between local communities, host governments and investors.⁸ An example is The Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment – jointly developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Bank – which contentiously outlined a set of principles to tap the opportunities and minimise the risks related to large-scale agricultural investments. The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (Tenure Guidelines hereafter) was invoked as a necessary instrument to guide responsible investments that will best contribute to the realisation of the right to food.⁹ Also, the African Union’s Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa and the Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges provided frameworks to guide the development of national land policies and enhance government commitment to land governance. These frameworks later led to the development and adoption of the Guiding Principles on Large-scale Land-Based Investment in Africa, which is very much in line with the Tenure Guidelines.¹⁰ However, in the context of countries such as Ethiopia, where property and civil rights are generally weak, human rights advocacy is extremely restricted, and the government is the primary agent driving land investments, the implementation and enforcement of the Tenure Guidelines could be politically challenging. In the absence of a strong and vibrant civil society, the Tenure Guidelines and other governance instruments could be used to legitimise the displacement and dispossession of local communities as the state and corporate actors apply tactical interpretations. In this context, how the Tenure Guidelines are implemented depends on how state actors interpret them. Obviously, in settings where a vibrant civil society exists, the interaction and engagement between state and civil society may have mutually empowering and transforming effects¹¹ and ultimately lead to democratisation.

Over the past few years, much has been written about the dramatic increase in the scope and scale of land acquisitions by investors. Research themes range from documentation of how much land was acquired, where, by whom and for what purposes, to the analysis of why the land acquisitions happened in particular regions and at particular times, and their implications for rural livelihoods and future trajectories of agrarian change (see, for example, the Journal of Peasant Studies from 2011 onwards). Studies have also emphasised the central role of the state in land deals and appropriation.¹² However, despite the fact that achieving global and national food security is often invoked as one of the main justifications for promoting large-scale land deals, it remains contested as to how and in what ways such land deals actually help ensure food security in already food-insecure countries being targeted for large-scale production of food and non-food crops for export. Little attention has been paid to understanding how such land-related investments run counter to the fulfilment of host governments’ obligations to protecting local people’s physical and economic access to and procurement of adequate food. This paper tries to scrutinise the human rights implications of the long-term lease of large areas of land by investors, particularly in relation to governments’ obligations to ensure the right to food. By examining the contradiction of state politics around the promotion of large-scale export-oriented agricultural investment, it highlights the challenges in terms of realising the right to food. The article builds on previous research by the author, official documents and reports, and the literature on recent agricultural investment in Ethiopia.

The next section presents a discussion of the politics of food security and the right-to-food framework. The third section analyses the implications of large-scale agricultural investments on the human rights of local communities to physical and economic access to adequate food or the means of its procurement. The fourth section discusses land rights in relation to state–society relations. The fifth section provides a short conclusion.

The politics of food security and a right-to-food perspective

Background

The fundamental role of agriculture in reducing rural poverty and ensuring food (and nutrition) security has long been recognised, both theoretically and empirically. Indeed, much of the rural poor in developing countries are still highly dependent on agriculture – crop and livestock production, fisheries and forestry – as their primary source of livelihood. Despite a rapidly urbanising world, it is estimated that three-quarters of poor people in the developing world reside in rural areas.¹³ For example, an estimated 70–75% of the 1.4 billion poor people living on less than US$1.25 per day are mainly in rural areas.¹⁴ The development of the agricultural sector is, therefore, essential to lift the rural poor out of poverty, due to its multiple direct and indirect effects. The poverty-reducing potential of agricultural growth is argued to be greater than growth in the non-agricultural sector.¹⁵ Nonetheless, it is also argued that the poverty-reducing role of agriculture will only be realised when agricultural development involves the majority of smallholder farmers.¹⁶

By 2050, global demand for food is estimated to have increased by at least 60% above 2006 levels. The smallholder sector is expected to play a key role in meeting these expanding demands,¹⁷ yet this sector has not yet received the attention it deserves. As a result, agriculture in developing countries faces formidable challenges that have emerged and developed through historical and modern contexts, the resolution of which will require many more efforts and commitments.¹⁸ There is ample historical evidence about the crucial role played by the state (and public policy) in agricultural development and rural poverty reduction. However, since the widespread introduction of structural adjustment programmes, there has been an absence of state agricultural and rural development in many developing countries, which negatively influenced the development of the sector.¹⁹ This is particularly the case in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Towards the end of the last decade, the world was alerted by the 2007–2008 global food crisis that ‘global food security should not be taken for granted’.²⁰ The crisis resulted in a major shift in thinking regarding the role of agriculture and rural development, in particular relating to poverty reduction and reducing the number of food insecure people. However, these dramatic developments also gave a boost to large-scale land investments and furthered the influence of corporate agro-business, unfavourably affecting smallholders.²¹ Transnational institutions and corporate actors in the global food regime called for a 70% increase in food production to achieve global food security for a world population projected to surpass nine billion people by 2050.²² The recent expansion of large-scale land acquisitions for the production of food crops and biofuels is thus seen partly as a strategy towards meeting global demand for food. However, it has long been recognised that hunger can persist in the midst of adequate availability of global food supplies.²³

Food insecurity is one of the most pressing and recurring challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, which continues to hold centre stage in generating development debates. As defined by the World Food Summit, ‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.²⁴ This implies that food security comprises key elements including availability, access, sufficiency, quality and safety of food.

Globally, the effect of the food price crisis in 2007–2008 and 2010 added tens of millions of people to the number of hungry people worldwide and ended up causing food riots in many countries.²⁵ Consequently, these crises continued to underscore food security as one of the most challenging issues facing the world.²⁶ Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of undernourished people worldwide: an estimated 23% – 220 million of the 795 million undernourished worldwide.²⁷ Food insecurity does not usually affect the whole population in a given country; rather it affects specific groups of vulnerable people who do not have access to key productive resources such as land, labour and capital to produce or purchase food.²⁸ Following the global food price crisis of 2007–2008, the leaders of the G8 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, and USA) at the L’Aquila summit pledged to boost investment in agriculture to address pervasive food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide. At L’Aquila, the global leaders pledged US$22 billion in global food security investments over three years to support country-owned food security strategies by engaging multilateral institutions. When this three-year international investment pledge came to an end in 2012, the G8 launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, shifting away from government-centred interventions to private sector-led investment in agriculture.²⁹ The New Alliance intended to raise 50 million poor people in sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty by 2022. Its goal was to increase domestic and foreign private investments in African agriculture. There is no question that investing in the agricultural sector of sub-Saharan Africa was needed, not only to increase the productivity of agriculture but also to bring about the rural transformation needed to eradicate poverty and ensure food security. However, the fundamental questions that merit attention include what types of investment, by whom, how much, where and when, as well as who will actually benefit from which investments.

In fact, by some, such as the World Bank,³⁰ there seems to be too much faith in globalisation and trade liberalisation trends and the potential positive impact on the smallholder farming sector particularly to accrue. Many critics³¹ have rejected such faith. Akram-Lodhi pointed out that by emphasising transforming smallholders’ systems of production towards ‘a modernised’, ‘commercially oriented’ and ‘new agriculture’, the World Bank and other mainstream organisations do not ‘focus upon the root sources of power, privilege, and poverty in global agriculture’.³² Rather than addressing the agrarian structures leading up to the process of accumulation and the issues that cause global agrarian crisis, the World Bank simply provides prescriptions for agriculture’s capitalisation that is linked to global corporate agriculture. The World Bank and other mainstream institutions justify the consolidation of corporate food regimes and, hence, the establishment of global agrarian capitalism that militates against the future of smallholder farmers. The legitimacy and dominance of the corporate food regime may benefit a relatively small group of capitalist farmers but it will increase the process of social differentiation leading to the proletarianisation of most peasants³³ and, hence, the benefits will not ‘trickle down’ to the majority of poor rural people.³⁴

In the context of the ongoing large-scale corporate agriculture versus smallholder farming discourse, a wide range of critical literature³⁵ has debunked the idea that large-scale corporate agriculture can offer a viable solution to the challenges of poverty reduction and food security. Writing from ‘a labor perspective’, Li demonstrates that large-scale land acquisitions cannot provide a way out of poverty as such capitalist systems of production do not absorb labour because the way capital, land and labour are combined affects employment opportunities and returns to labour. She argues that large-scale agriculture not only falls short of reducing poverty but also actively produces poverty.³⁶ De Schutter argues that investing in smallholders has a considerable impact on poverty reduction. Increased smallholders’ income has strong multiplier effects that could stimulate demand for locally available goods and services, in contrast to incomes generated by large-scale producers who tend to spend income on imported inputs and machinery with much less trickle-down to the local economy.³⁷

The promotion of smallholder farming is compelling for the sake of achieving both equity and poverty reduction concurrently, and can help to reduce regional inequalities, forging more balance between rural and urban areas. Quan explains that neglecting small-scale farmers entails major social costs and can result in deepening rural poverty and rapid migration to urban areas.³⁸ In rural areas, particularly in places where certain social groups are marginalised from access to land and other farming opportunities, possibilities of rural conflict and insecurity are high and, hence, could lead to political and inter-ethnic conflicts. The existence of a strong smallholder sector, however, can help prevent massive and rapid migration of rural labour to urban areas³⁹ and, furthermore, lead to poverty reduction in rural areas through small farms’ contribution to urban poverty reduction.

The state and the right to food

The work of Sen in Poverty and Famines (1981) underscored that hunger and malnutrition are not necessarily attributable to a lack of available food. They occur when individuals do not have access to adequate food, despite the availability of food. Hunger and malnutrition are thus characterised by a lack of physical and economic access to adequate food or a lack of access to the means of production, and the failure of the state to promote and protect access to means of production for certain segments of society. So despite the need to boost agricultural production in many sub-Saharan African countries, increasing production is not sufficient to achieve food security. Indeed, in a new era of growing and renewed global interest in land resources and climate change, achieving food security remains a difficult challenge. Consequently, there is an urgent need to tackle hunger and malnutrition with a right-to-food approach.⁴⁰ According to the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR, 1999), ‘The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has a physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement’ (CESCR General Comment No. 12, Article 11). The right to food refers not only to the availability of food but also to the social, economic, political and cultural issues through which access to food can be realised. States are the primary duty bearers for the realisation of the right to food with obligations to respect, protect and fulfil peoples’ rights. Obligations to respect require limits on the exercise of state power, in which the state refrains from taking any measures that may deprive or threaten individuals’ and communities’ access to productive resources on which they depend for their livelihoods. Obligations to protect require the state to protect individuals’ and communities’ access to productive resources from encroachment by non-state actors. This requires protecting existing access to and control over land, water, grazing and fishing grounds, and forest resources. Obligations to fulfil, require the state to strengthen individuals’ and communities’ access to and utilisation of productive resources to ensure their livelihoods and actively stimulate people’s abilities to provide for themselves. The obligation to fulfil also implies that whenever it is not possible for individuals to provide adequate food for themselves, the state must provide them with it.

Using a right-to-food-based approach to food security is essential for the fight against hunger and malnutrition, particularly in this era of a convergence of multiple global crises which have caused competition and enclosure of land resources by state and corporate actors for different purposes including the production of food, biofuels and animal feed; the use of forestry products; conservation; and mineral extraction. This inherently affects poor rural people’s access to land resources on which they depend for their livelihoods and hence the realisation of their right to food.

Ethiopia has adopted multiple international conventions and instruments relevant to the right to food. These include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Article 13(2) of Ethiopia’s constitution states that its fundamental human rights provisions ‘shall be interpreted in a manner conforming to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenants on Human Rights and international instruments adopted by Ethiopia’. The Constitution of Ethiopia has provisions related to the right to food (although not explicitly as set out in the ICESCR) and also recognises the realisation of this right as the responsibility of the state. Article 90(1) in particular states that ‘To the extent the country’s resources permit, policies shall aim to provide all Ethiopians access to public health and education, clean water, housing, food and social security’.

The Ethiopian state has been a key player in large-scale land investments not only in the transfer of land to investors but also as a direct agricultural investor, especially in sugar plantations.⁴¹ By establishing the Agricultural Investment Land Administration Agency (AILAA) and a land bank at the federal government level, land transfers to investors have been directly carried out by the federal government although the power to administer land belongs to regional states.⁴² As a result, questions of power over land resource decision-making are proving to be central and becoming a focal point of contestation among and within state actors and between state and society.⁴³ As Lund and Boone noted: ‘contestation over land and resources often involves struggles not only over land per se, but also over the legitimate authority to define and settle land issues’.⁴⁴

Issues regarding land have always been highly contentious political issues in Ethiopia because the country is ‘a multi-ethnic and multi-nation state where nationality and culture are intimately tied to place’ and issues of land access and control have been ‘a Gordian knot of rivaling political and economic interests’.⁴⁵ The ongoing overlapping claims to authority over land control between regional and federal state actors shed some light on prevailing contradictions within the state. Also, the competing power between state actors over land and resources lead to debates over the country’s current political system, the challenges of decentralisation, and the persisting interest in retaining central control over decision-making.⁴⁶ In the case of post-1991 Ethiopia, despite the establishment of a federal political system aimed at decentralising state power to regional constituents, the way in which the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – a coalition of ethnic-based parties – has been organised under a centralised party structure appears to undermine the objective of devolving power to regional state governments. The EPRDF controls all regional state governments, either directly through its coalition parties or indirectly through its affiliates. Regional state governments are not likely to operate independently of the party in power at the federal level to pursue their regional interests or genuinely represent them at the federal level.⁴⁷ Accordingly, in the current context of commercial investments, it appears that regional states have only nominal authority to administer their land resources, especially when it comes to much of their potentially cultivable land that can be brought under large-scale commercial agriculture.⁴⁸

Implications of large-scale agricultural investments for the right to food

Although Ethiopia has designed and implemented a range of development policies and plans relevant to the realisation of the right to food,⁴⁹ this section will focus on the implications and contradictions of the current government’s agricultural development strategy based on export-oriented, large-scale agricultural development mainly in the lowland regions.

Over the last decade, the Ethiopian government has promoted large-scale, export-oriented agricultural investment as a major part of its overall development strategy of making Ethiopia a food-secure, middle-income country by 2025. As several studies demonstrate, both domestic and foreign investors have already acquired a substantial amount of land, mainly in the lowland regions.⁵⁰ Despite this, the proportion of land developed has been far below expectations and some of the high-profile land deals, such as the Karuturi Global Ltd Farm project, have already collapsed. The concept of terra nullius has been used as the overriding narrative and discourse by the government and other elite actors to justify the transfer of large swathes of land to investors in those lowland peripheral regions,⁵¹ and also land in Ethiopia is officially in state ownership. However, there is ample evidence that the land already transferred to investors or awaiting potential investors in the federal land bank is, in many cases, not ‘unused’ or ‘unoccupied land’. Nor was the identification, delineation and transfer of land to investors or the federal land bank based on ‘free, prior and informed consent’ of local communities.⁵² Even land that is perceived as ‘underutilised’ and ‘available’ is actually a fundamental source of local livelihoods and survival strategies. As a result, the enclosure and conversion of land to new uses has already had adverse impacts on and implications for poor local communities,⁵³ and had far-reaching implications for their food security and livelihoods. As local communities are politically fractured and socially differentiated along class, ethnicity, gender, generation, livelihood and ecology lines,⁵⁴ the land acquisitions have had differentiated impacts. Communities in the borderlands in the eastern and western lowlands, who are mainly shifting cultivators, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists, constitute the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in Ethiopia’s political economy and history,⁵⁵ and they remain the ones specifically affected by the land acquisitions. For indigenous communities, crop farming, livestock and forest resources accessed under de facto customary common property regimes continue to constitute the key sources of food security and livelihoods.

There is no doubt that there is a strong need for investment in agriculture and rural development in Ethiopia. In this regard, some fundamental questions deserve adequate attention, including what types of investments, where, and who will actually benefit from which investments.

Ample evidence shows that agriculture plays a key role in poverty reduction in many sub-Saharan African countries. A study by Ligon and Sadoulet, for example, indicates that agricultural growth tends to benefit the poorest households more than non-agricultural income growth: they found that a 1% growth in gross domestic product (GDP) derived from agriculture leads to a more than 6% increase in expenditure by the poorest deciles.⁵⁶ Another empirical study⁵⁷ supports the overall argument that increasing the productivity of the agricultural sector is central for effective poverty reduction, particularly for low-income and resource-poor countries. The study⁵⁸ simulated a 1% growth in GDP per capita each in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors to see their marginal effect on total poverty. The findings reveal that growth in agriculture led to a five times higher reduction in poverty than growth in non-agriculture did. Incredibly, this increased to an 11 times higher reduction in sub-Saharan African countries. Similarly, another study⁵⁹ used an economy-wide simulation model to examine the role of agriculture for poverty reduction in six African countries.⁶⁰ For Ethiopia, if the annual GDP growth rate of 3.1% is maintained, the poverty headcount would be 44.3% by the year 2015. However, accelerating growth in agriculture by 5% a year would result in the reduction of poverty to 26.5% by 2015. In contrast, growth driven by 7% growth in the non-agricultural sector would only reduce poverty to 37.3%. Clearly, investments in agriculture and rural development are essential for alleviating poverty and food insecurity, but along with the need to spend more on agriculture to address the challenges facing the sector, equally important is where and how the resources are allocated in the sector.

In the past few decades, agriculture in different countries suffered from discriminatory, growth-constraining policies.⁶¹ Some well-known, unfavourable policies include overvalued exchange rates, industrial protection, and export taxation on agriculture. Also, the support provided to the agricultural sector via subsidised inputs, credit, infrastructure, research, and extension services were very limited compared to the actual surplus extracted from agriculture. Furthermore, the support almost exclusively privileged and often went to large-scale modern farms rather than to smallholders.⁶²

The Ethiopian experience represents a typical case of policies that persistently and heavily discriminated against its agricultural sector in general and small-scale peasant farming in particular, especially during the Imperial era (before 1974) and the Derg period (from 1974 to 1991).⁶³ During the Imperial period, policy was influenced by the then-popular idea of import-substitution and primacy was given to the industrial sector. Agriculture was meant to play an instrumental role in providing the resources required for the industrialisation process, leading to policies favouring large-scale commercial farms. This resulted in a lack of capital investment, technical support and extension services in peasant agriculture.⁶⁴ Also, the feudal land tenure systems had allowed the concentration of land in the hands of a few absentee landlords, facilitating the excessive exploitation of tenants.

After the 1974 revolution, the Derg regime, with its socialist ideology, again favoured the industrial sector over the agricultural sector. Within the agricultural sector, large-scale state farms were favoured over small-scale peasant farming. This was justified by the Leninist ideology that regarded subsistence peasant farming and organisation as ‘undesirable’ and considered the peasant sector to be ‘stagnant’ and isolated from the ‘modern’ sector.⁶⁵ Peasants were conceived as dysfunctional to the entire economy since they controlled land resources that could be used more efficiently by mechanised state farms. Aredo concludes that past policies were characterised by various types of biases against agriculture in general and small peasant farming in particular, such as scale and technological bias (ie preferential treatment of large farms), and spatial bias (with the concentration of modern farming inputs and extension services in limited areas).⁶⁶ In general, the agricultural sector was regarded as a sector that had to be constantly squeezed to generate a surplus to finance the industrial sector.

However, decades of neglect resulted in the agricultural sector neither fulfilling its major functions of providing adequate food to both rural and urban populations, nor providing sufficient resources required for an industrialisation process. Instead, this centuries-old sector remained underdeveloped and unable to feed its population. Until recently, the current government had emphasised smallholder agriculture as the main engine for food security and a source of growth for the national economy. Support through a variety of programmes was provided to smallholders through both domestic resources and donor assistance.

More recently, however, while the emphasis is still on the critical role of smallholders, the government’s consecutive five-year development plans, implemented since 2005, have once again emphasised the role of large-scale commercial agriculture. The current Ethiopian government sees large-scale agricultural investment as a means of achieving national food security through foreign exchange earnings from agricultural exports, increased food availability, improved incomes via employment on commercial farms, and the expansion of local infrastructure. Basically, through its strategy of promoting smallholder commercialisation in the highland regions and large-scale commercial agriculture in the lowlands, the government seeks to ensure national food security. However, the question is whose food security is improving or reducing as a result of such a spatially differentiated strategy. Whose interests are marginalised? Given the strong need for investment in rural areas, it is important to ensure that agricultural investments ‘truly reduce hunger and malnutrition, rather than aggravating them’.⁶⁷

Most empirical case studies conducted in the regions targeted by large-scale agricultural investment have found adverse impacts on local livelihoods, food security and access to key natural resources. Contrary to governments’ expectations, the available evidence shows that leases of large areas of land, including forest areas and common property resources, are threatening both the ecosystems and the livelihoods of local communities. A case study in Bako Tibee woreda (Oromiya region, Ethiopia) by Shete and Rutten indicates that the food security of local communities worsened and their income levels declined due to land acquisitions by Karuturi Company.⁶⁸ This is because the land transferred to Karuturi was previously used by local communities for farming and livestock grazing under de facto customary systems. Furthermore, crops produced by the company were not sold in local markets and hence did not contribute to increasing the availability of food in local markets. In their analysis, Shete and Rutten showed that households had better food security and income levels before the land was transferred to Karuturi.

Rahmato has also demonstrated that land acquisitions in Bako Tibee woreda and Gambella region caused land displacement and damage to local livelihoods by depriving local communities from accessing vital common-property land-based resources.⁶⁹ Similarly, a study in the Benishangul-Gumuz region by Moreda reveals that large-scale land acquisitions have had adverse impacts on local land-use practices and land resources, including land dispossession, declining access to resources, and environmental destruction. The study demonstrated that investors converted local communities’ cultivated lands, fallow lands and forestlands into permanent farmlands, thus affecting local land rights and land-use practices.⁷⁰ Aisbett and Barbanente confirm that large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia have entailed a loss of land and resource rights for the rural poor.⁷¹ Moreover, a recent review of case study evidence from sub-Saharan Africa (including cases in Ethiopia) showed that most large-scale land acquisitions have negative impacts on local livelihoods.⁷² This study shows that land deals tend to result in the cultivation of industrial crops such as cotton rather than food crops and cereals.

Although the Ethiopian government envisaged employment generation as one of the benefits of investments, relatively few job opportunities have been created. Obviously, large-scale, capital-intensive agricultural development models do not employ more labour and are less likely to ease local youth unemployment problems. The limited (and often seasonal) employment opportunities were not taken up by those people who lost their land or livelihoods because of the land investments: the investment projects tended to use seasonal labour from other parts of the country rather than local people, implying a systematic marginalisation of local communities.⁷³ As a result, affected local communities started resisting the appropriation of land and exclusion from employment in various ways.⁷⁴ Indeed, as Cotula et al. noted, ‘the promise, or expectation, that plantation agriculture could bring substantial numbers of permanent and skilled jobs in the production of basic crops is inconsistent with the realities of agriculture and farm labour in developing countries’.⁷⁵ Furthermore, the fact that currently a large number of investment projects are only partly operational, have failed to materialise or have already collapsed means that the number of jobs created remains much lower than originally anticipated.

Similarly, studies have shown that the expected technology transfer from large-scale agricultural investments to transform smallholder farming practices did not happen. One of the key assumptions put forward by the government to justify recent commitments to promote and expand large-scale land investment was that such investments present an opportunity to transform subsistence-based smallholder farming through technology transfer. Yet from the outset, it was ‘illogical to expect the transfer of technology from large-scale investors who use mechanized and energy-intensive farming techniques to smallholders’ cultivating small plots of land.⁷⁶

Clearly, then, large-scale land investments are facilitating the creation of a class of large landholders at the expense of the poor and vulnerable communities in the lowlands.⁷⁷ Rahmato also asserts that

[t]he most visible outcome at present is the re-concentration of land in the hands of a small group of domestic moneyed elites, foreign capitalists, and state bureaucrats. In a way, the program of land investment will return the country to the time of the imperial regime, when a minority of propertied elements – landed nobility, local gentry and urban bourgeoisie – owned the greater portion of the country’s agricultural land.⁷⁸

In the contemporary context of Ethiopia, ‘class differentiation emerging from within the peasantry should be a thing of the past’.⁷⁹ This is particularly the case because ‘the existing land system discourages rural differentiation based on land size’.⁸⁰ Variations or inequalities in landholdings among households were reduced due to previous land redistribution and other measures, which were manifestations of the country’s land system after the land reform of 1975.⁸¹ However, as noted, current trends in government-driven large-scale land transfers are facilitating rural class formation and the marginalisation of poor rural people as investors accumulate agricultural, pastoral and forest land. Notwithstanding, Rahmato⁸² argues that rural class differentiation is not detrimental, as long as it takes its natural course. He argues that agrarian transformation achieved through the agency of smallholder peasants becoming commercial farmers would bring about a change that would be more sustainable than the one spearheaded by investors or landed classes. He further argues that this route does not involve large-scale peasant dispossession and displacements from land, or the transformation of peasants into wage labourers, and thus is critical to ensure local food security and accumulation. In his own words:

I believe such a farmer will not be driven by the brutal ethos of naked capitalism but will instead engage in a form of enterprise combining capitalist and associative elements such as co-operatives, peer-based credit services, group-based investment ventures, and environmental-friendly management practices. … If eventually, the dissolution of the peasantry is to occur, it will occur through the internal evolution of that class and the emergence of different social forces within it.⁸³

For now, given its sheer size as well as its political significance, the smallholder sector will continue to be the focus of government policies in the highland regions and large-scale agricultural investments will largely be confined to remote peripheral lowlands⁸⁴ where the government views the practice of pastoralism and shifting cultivation as unsustainable and inefficient.

Land rights, the state and civil society

In recent years, as the global resource rush has continued, local communities, grassroots groups and social movements are struggling against ongoing natural resource-capturing investment deals that expel people from their land, increase (existing) socio-economic inequalities and injustices, and raise the risks of environmental degradation and conflict. As a result, there is a growing convergence of (trans)national agrarian, food and environmental justice movements around the world. In Africa, there is a growing number of local movements – representing peasants, pastoralists, indigenous and minority ethnic peoples, women, youth, landless people, fishing and forest communities, and other local civil society groups – which are mobilising and linking with global struggles against land leases/agricultural development models based on large-scale, export-oriented, industrial, monocrop plantations, engaging in advocacy work, and lobbying governments and international institutions to stop and rollback such investments. Examples include CNOP Mali (Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes), Environmental Rights Action Nigeria, Katosi Women Development Trust (Uganda), Masifundise Development Trust (South Africa), South African Food Sovereignty Campaign, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, Network of Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa (ROPPA). These social movements are actively engaged in action research, advocacy, civic education, and lobbying for policies and laws to protect farmers’ seeds, knowledge, land, water, forests, and fishery and farming systems from threats of privatisation and corporate enclosure and from climate change.

In Ethiopia, however, organised social movements and advocacy groups for the recognition, respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights and democratic governance are scarce. The role of civil society groups in promoting human rights and advancing poor people’s political empowerment has been restricted, meaning that their ability to use the right-to-food approach to food security is limited. Although states have a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food, the enforcement of such obligations depends on a strong and vibrant civil society that defends the rights of poor and marginalised groups and holds the state accountable for any actions that may deprive or threaten individuals and communities from accessing the means to produce their food.

As noted, although ensuring national food security is one of the justifications for promoting large-scale agricultural investments in Ethiopia, paradoxically this strategy appears to have adversely affected local food security. Many have argued that large-scale land investments could contribute to poverty reduction and ensure food security if the associated challenges and risks were minimised and regulated to ensure local communities are not adversely affected.⁸⁵ They emphasise the need to improve transparency and accountability around land investments, including the implementation of voluntary tenure guidelines. However, even using the Tenure Guidelines to which the government of Ethiopia is a party, this is difficult to achieve. In particular, given the limited space for opposition to government policy in Ethiopia, it is difficult for civil society actors to scrutinise the human rights implications of land-related investments. A strong civil society is needed not only to oppose ongoing large-scale export-oriented agricultural investments, but also to contribute to democratising land access and control and to advocate for the rights of poor and marginalised groups.⁸⁶ However, the contribution of civil society depends on the political space available “to organize, to operate, to have a legitimate voice, to protest and to dissent’ and eventually influence policy.⁸⁷ Thus, civil society groups need autonomy and capacity to function effectively. However,

it is the legal framework of the state that establishes the limits of autonomy for the associations and activities that make up civil society. If that framework is widely accepted, then the activities of the state and other social groups may be mutually empowering

⁸⁸In theory, domestic civil society groups in Ethiopia are granted autonomy to engage in rights advocacy and democratic governance, but may not, in practice, pursue these activities. The country’s civil society law, enacted in 2009, severely weakened the work of civil society organisations, particularly those of human rights defenders and advocates of democratic governance. The Charities and Societies Proclamation No. 621/2009 prohibits all foreign nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) as well as those local NGOs that receive more than 10% of their funding from foreign sources from engaging in human rights and conflict-related activities. The law has had a devastating effect on human rights organisations, forcing many to shut or scale down their activities, or change their focus to aid and service delivery. Even before this law was enacted, human rights organisations were few and had limited outreach. Human rights groups mainly had a presence in major urban areas, with rural areas being neglected.⁸⁹ Furthermore, human rights-related interventions in Ethiopia usually prioritise civil and political rights such as freedom of expression, assembly and association, and rarely articulate the right to adequate food. Also, rights awareness – particularly the right to food – among the rural poor is limited, which in turn affects their ability to negotiate and claim their rights.⁹⁰ As Rahmato pointed out,

rural areas which should have been a priority area for rights advocacy groups have been almost totally neglected. … [T]he policy environment has been quite hostile to rights advocacy in the country in general, and there have been more roadblocks to such work in the countryside in particular. Nevertheless, neither NGOs nor other civil society organizations have given serious thought to rights issues as an important element of their engagement with peasant communities.

⁹¹The concern here is not necessarily that foreign NGOs are prohibited from engaging on human rights issues, but rather, by putting severe hurdles and limitations on securing financial support, the law has effectively excluded domestic organisations as well. In addition to putting a 10% cap on funding from foreign sources, the Charities and Societies Proclamation put bureaucratic restrictions on how domestic financial resources are mobilised. For example, human rights organisations must secure authorisation from the Charities and Societies Agency for any domestic fundraising event and are required to submit detailed information about all their benefactors and members to the agency, which understandably deters domestic support. Additionally, human rights defenders, including land rights defenders, face a serious risk of criminalisation – a key challenge in which those who attempt to defend rights are portrayed as ‘criminals’, ‘anti-development elements’ or ‘terrorists’ and subjected to criminal charges. Conversely, illegitimate actions and human rights violations by state and non-state actors often go unpunished, resulting in public accountability and adherence to human rights commitments remaining scarce. For example, the 2016 protests and political unrest in Ethiopia, partly driven by threats to land rights and marginalisation, led to clashes with security forces resulting in an official death toll of 669.⁹² However, accountability for this remains scarce, revealing the level of impunity in the country. Government control and the use of media play a central role in the criminalisation of human rights defenders. The media is often used to present

stereotypes that allow human rights defenders to be portrayed negatively as people who generate conflicts and by the reiterated use of terms that associate their actions with the disturbance of public order, calm and citizen security. This stigmatizing discourse permits society to associate protest with chaos, civil disorder, the perturbation of public order and criminality, and to equate protesters with criminals.

⁹³Nevertheless, despite the authoritarian nature of the Ethiopian state and its lack of tolerance of organised opposition, there have been growing protests and reactions against the government over land rights-related disputes in recent years. In fact, as noted earlier, the underlying factors for such protests run deeper to include issues of political power, privilege, political freedom and social justice. Land acquisition in urban and peri-urban environs for industrial parks, cut-flower farming, housing, recreation and other urban land uses shows similarities to large-scale land acquisition for food and biofuel production in the lowland regions. The recent proposed expansion of Addis Ababa’s territory is informative of this dynamic. The rapid growth of Addis Ababa has resulted in increasing pressure to convert the surrounding rural land of the Oromiya regional state for other uses. However, concerns over loss of local land rights, as well as questions of the legitimacy of competing claims to political authority and jurisdiction over land issues, triggered violent clashes and protests in the Oromiya region. Although the plan to expand Addis Ababa’s territory was dropped, protests continued, revealing some of the underlying issues. Such resistance – which led the government to impose a state of emergency from October 2016 to July 2017 – involved attacks on investment projects in which several foreign-owned flower farms were burned down. The protests later expanded to the Amhara region, with disputes over land control again being the immediate trigger. Similarly, there have been reports of attacks and damage to investment projects by anti-government protesters.⁹⁴

Conversely, in the lowland regions, opposition and resistance against commercial land acquisitions do not always take overt, organised and collective forms.⁹⁵ Moreover, there was also a case in which an exiled Ethiopian filed a legal challenge in the UK against the Department for International Development (DfID) – a major donor to the Ethiopian government – for funding an Ethiopian government project run by the World Bank that implemented a villagisation programme. Human rights groups accused the World Bank on similar grounds, claiming that the villagisation programme was used to evict local communities from their land to make way for commercial agricultural investments.⁹⁶ Clearly, despite the tightening democratic space in Ethiopia, popular opposition is growing across the country. In general, these protests are as much about political power, the legitimacy of overlapping and competing claims to authority, issues of governance, and the accountability of public officials as they are about loss of local land rights and livelihoods and the distribution of resources.

In the context of ongoing large-scale agricultural investment in Ethiopia, it is critical to recognise the direct link between the right to adequate food and access to land, pasture and other natural resources by the rural poor, and to adequately address the concerns of those whose livelihoods depend on access to land-based resources. Given the fact that land remains the most fundamental resource in rural areas across Ethiopia, how the government handles land rights, land access and land distribution is revealing about its commitments to fundamental human rights. Changes in state–civil society interactions and the ability of the rural poor to make their voices heard are key for progressive and inclusive forms of agricultural development.⁹⁷

Conclusions

This article has explored how the promotion of large-scale, export-oriented agricultural investments could run counter to ensuring local food security. In the context of rural Ethiopia, although land remains at the centre of livelihoods, access to land and the ability to defend claims to land are becoming difficult challenges for the rural poor, thereby affecting food security and livelihoods. This declining access to agricultural, pastoral and forest land resources among the rural poor is attributable partly to increased access by other actors including the state, state-owned enterprises and private corporate actors. Social movements and civil society groups in many developing countries have invoked arguments related to the human rights of rural communities to adequate food, including access to land to produce their food, when arguing about the adverse effects of large-scale agricultural investments. However, such efforts have been limited in Ethiopia due to the limited democratic space available for genuine political engagement by civil society. The recent trends in large-scale land transfers to investors in Ethiopia will lead to an agrarian structure and social relations that produce processes of accumulation based on dispossession, displacement and differentiation. Although some of the agricultural investment deals have stalled or collapsed, local communities have already felt adverse impacts and losses. The government has acknowledged that its large-scale agricultural investment plans have not worked, yet its commitment to supporting agricultural investment projects remains unchanged.

The need for investment in Ethiopia’s agricultural and rural development is well recognised, but requires the promotion of alternatives to large-scale agricultural development models that will not expel poor people from their land, cause environmental damage or exacerbate conflicts. Inclusive and sustainable investment and development models are needed which improve the livelihoods of the poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups and increase their food security. The ever-tightening democratic space for civil society in Ethiopia means that the available governance instruments – including the Tenure Guidelines – are less likely to be implemented effectively and could instead be used to legitimise the dispossession and displacement of the poor. Given recent trends of alliances between the state and corporate actors, the political and legal empowerment of poor people and their organisations to strengthen their ability to negotiate, defend, claim and retain their rights to land resources is critical.

Overall, the political challenges affecting the government’s obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of vulnerable, marginalised and threatened rural social groups in Ethiopia – such as peasants, shifting cultivators and pastoralists – to have physical and economic access to adequate food or the means for its procurement is proving to be central. In the new era of global land rush and climate change, the challenges of these poor rural people in ensuring their food security are likely to intensify.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tsegaye Moreda

Tsegaye Moreda is a postdoctoral fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, and a founding member of Young African Researchers in Agriculture (YARA) network based at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His research interests are in the politics of natural resources – land, water, forests, sub-soil minerals – examined in the context of the global resource rush (land grabbing, the rise of extractivism, agro-extractivism, large-scale development interventions) and climate change (focusing on the politics of narratives around mitigation and adaptation). He also has work and interest in the various forms of political reactions by poor people towards dynamic changes in the political economy (land/property, labour, income, reproduction) of natural resources, including in studying – and, at the same time, working with – social movements. His research is mostly in Eastern Africa.

Notes

1. Borras and Franco, “Contemporary Discourses and Contestations,” 3; Lund and Boone, “Introduction.”

2. Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change.

3. Borras et al., “The Politics of Agrofuels”; Borras and Franco, “Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories”; HLPE, Land Tenure and International Investments; and Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”

4. Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata, Africa’s Land Rush.

5. Lavers and Boamah, “Impact of Agricultural Investments”; Lavers, “Agricultural Investment in Ethiopia”; and Moreda, “Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

6. Rahmato, “Perils of Development from Above,” 35.

7. Lund and Boone, “Introduction,” 2.

8. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland; and Deininger, “Challenges Posed by the New Wave.”

9. FAO, “Voluntary Guidelines.”

10. AU-AfDB-ECA, Guiding Principles.

11. Migdal, “The State in Society.”

12. Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation”; Wolford et al., “Governing Global Land Deals”; and Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

13. IFAD, Rural Poverty Report 2011; Ravallion, Chen, and Sangraula, New Evidence on the Urbanization, 693; and Byerlee, de Janvry, and Sadoulet, “Agriculture for Development,” 17.

14. IFAD, Rural Poverty Report 2011.

15. Ligon and Sadoulet, Estimating the Effects; Christiaensen, Demery, and Kuhl, The (Evolving) Role of Agriculture; and Diao, Hazell, and Thurlow, “Role of Agriculture in African Development.”

16. van der Ploeg, Peasants and the Art of Farming.

17. FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World: Economic Growth, 30.

18. Chang, “Rethinking Public Policy in Agriculture.”

19. Ibid.

20. Byerlee, de Janvry, and Sadoulet, “Agriculture for Development,” 22.

21. McMichael, Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions; HLPE, Land Tenure and International Investments.

22. FAO, How to Feed the World in 2050.

23. Sen, Poverty and Famines.

24. FAO, Rome Declaration, 2.

25. Holt-Giménez and Patel, Food Rebellions.

26. Nelson et al., Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change, 1; and FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World: Addressing.

27. FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015, 8.

28. Boussard et al., Food Security and Agricultural Development.

29. McKeon, New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.

30. For example: World Bank, World Development Report 2008.

31. For example: Akram-Lodhi, “(Re)imagining Agrarian Relations”; McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture”; Kay, “Development Strategies and Rural Development”; Rizzo, “The Struggle for Alternatives”; Woodhouse, “Technology, Environment, and the Productivity Problem”; Hall, “The 2008 World Development Report”; and Oya, “The World Development Report 2008.”

32. Akram-Lodhi, “(Re)imagining Agrarian Relations,” 1160.

33. Kay, “Development Strategies and Rural Development.”

34. McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture.”

35. Example: Li, “Centering Labor in the Land Grab Debate”; McMichael, “Banking on Agriculture”; and De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing.”

36. Li, “Centering Labor in the Land Grab Debate,” 285.

37. De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing,” 262.

38. Quan, “A Future for Small-Scale Farming.”

39. Hazell, Smallholder and Pro-Poor Agriculture Growth.

40. De Schutter and Cordes, Accounting for Hunger; and Golay and Biglino, “Human Rights Responses to Land Grabbing.”

41. Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions”; Rahmato, “Perils of Development from Above”; Abbink, “Land to the Foreigners”; and Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation.”

42. Rahmato, “Perils of Development from Above”; Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions”; and Lavers, “Agricultural Investment in Ethiopia.”

43. Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

44. Lund and Boone, “Introduction,” 2; See also Berry, ” Debating the Land Question in Africa.”

45. wa Githinji and Mersha, “Untying the Gordian Knot,” 310.

46. Markakis, Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers; Lavers, “‘Land Grab’ as Development Strategy”; Abbink, “Land to the Foreigners”; Rahmato, “Perils of Development from Above”; and Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

47. Aalen, Ethnic Federalism in a Dominant Party State; and Makki, “Power and Property.”

48. see Moreda and Spoor, “Politics of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions”; Abbink, “Land to the Foreigners”; Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation”; and Rahmato, “Perils of Development from Above.”

49. Since the mid-1990s, the government of Ethiopia has implemented a national Food Security Strategy (FSS) aimed at ensuring food security and leading to various regional food security programmes and projects. The 2010 Food Security Programme was geared towards improving the food security of rural households through the provision of different support mechanisms including agricultural extension packages and credit, and improving community resources and infrastructure.

50. Oakland Institute, Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa; Rahmato, Land to Investors; Lavers, “‘Land Grab’ as Development Strategy”; and Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence.”

51. Makki, “Development by Dispossession.”

52. See Rahmato, Land to Investors; Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence”; and Shete and Rutten, “Impacts of Large-Scale Farming.”

53. Keeley et al., Large-Scale Land Deals in Ethiopia; Moreda, “Large-Scale Land Acquisitions”; Shete and Rutten, “Impacts of Large-Scale Farming”; Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation”; and Rahmato, Land to Investors.

54. See Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change.

55. See Markakis, Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers.

56. Ligon and Sadoulet, “Estimating the Effects.”

57. Christiaensen, Demery, and Kuhl, The (Evolving) Role of Agriculture, 30.

58. Ibid., 30.

59. Diao, Hazell, and Thurlow, “Role of Agriculture in African Development.”

60. Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.

61. Kiros, The Subsistence Crisis in Africa; Gabriel, “Development Strategies and the Ethiopian Peasantry”; and Alemu, “Aid-Driven Import Substitution.”

62. Kiros, The subsistence crisis; Haile Gabriel, “Development strategies”; and Alemu, “Aid-driven import substitution.”

63. Cohen and Weintraub, Land and Peasants in Imperial Ethiopia; Kiros, The Subsistence Crisis in Africa; Gabriel, “Development Strategies and the Ethiopian Peasantry”; Alemu, “Aid-Driven Import Substitution”; and Rahmato, The Peasant and the State.

64. Aredo, “The Evolution of Rural Development Policies.”

65. Almeu, “Land Tenure and Soil Conservation.”

66. Aredo, “The Evolution of Rural Development Policies,” 53.

67. De Schutter, “How Not to Think of Land-Grabbing,” 272.

68. Shete and Rutten, “Impacts of Large-Scale Farming.”

69. Rahmato, Land to Investors.

70. Moreda, “Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

71. Aisbett and Barbanente, Impacts of Large-Scale Foreign Land Acquisitions.

72. Hufe and Heuermann, “Local Impacts of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions.”

73. See Keeley et al., Large-Scale Land Deals in Ethiopia; and Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence.”

74. See Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence.”

75. Cotula et al., “Testing Claims about Large Land Deals,” 920.

76. Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation,” 815.

77. Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation.”

78. Rahmato, “Up for Grabs,” 103.

79. Rahmato, The Peasant and the State, 322.

80. Ibid., 305.

81. Ibid.

82. Rahmato, The Peasant and the State.

83. Ibid., 350.

84. Lavers, “Patterns of Agrarian Transformation,” 816.

85. World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland; and Deininger, “Challenges Posed by the New Wave.”

86. Franco, Monsalve, and Borras, “Democratic Land Control and Human Rights.”

87. TNI, “On ‘Shrinking Space,’” 3.

88. Migdal, “The State in Society,” 28.

89. Rahmato, The Peasant and the State, 269.

90. Hossain, Lintelo, and Kelbert, Common Sense Approach to the Right to Food.

91. Rahmato, The Peasant and the State, 269.

92. See The Reporter (April 22, 2017) for the official death toll report, https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/content/commission-names-responsible-parties-deadly-violence

93. Martin, Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders, 30.

94. The Reporter (September 2, 2016), Ethiopian Newspaper, http://www.thereporterethiopia.com/content/dutch-owned-flower-farm-torched-protestors (accessed September 14, 2017); http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/firms-attacked-ethiopia-protests-continue-160902064459286.html

95. See Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence.”

96. Rahmato, Land to Investors; Makki, “Development by Dispossession”; and Moreda, “Listening to Their Silence.”

97. Lahiff, “Book Review.”