The Great Climate Robbery by Grain

Author:Grain
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780263403
Publisher: New Internationalist
Published: 2016-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Box 1: Profile – Mozaco and the Grupo Espirito Santo

The Mozambique Agricultural Corporation (Mozaco) was established in Mozambique in June 2013 by Rioforte Investments and João Ferreira dos Santos (JFS Holding).

Mozaco says it acquired a DUAT for 2,389 hectares near the village of Natuto in the Malema District of Nampula Province in June 2013, where it plans to cultivate soybeans and cotton. The company says its “objective is to expand it up to 20,000 hectares”. It also intends to pursue contract production with 116–170 local farmers on 83 hectares, building on a program developed with the US NGO Technoserve.5

The area occupied by Mozaco in Natuto community, in Malema District, is an area that in colonial times was occupied by a settler called Morgado, who produced tobacco and cotton on about 1,000 hectares. After independence, the government nationalized the lands and installed a state company known as Unidade de Namele, which also operated farms in Ribaué and Laulaua Districts. At its height, the state farm employed 5,000 workers but, by 1989, with the civil war intensifying, it was shut down.

“When the company was closed, workers were owed several years of back wages,” says a 48-year-old father of seven from Natuto who worked at the Unidade de Namele farm. “But, as it was impossible to complain because of the level of government repression at the time, many of us just ended up taking small parcels of land from the state farm of between one to five hectares, which we cultivate to this day. The company João Fereira dos Santos cultivated a few hectares of Virginia tobacco in the early 1990s, but it abandoned these operations years ago.”6

Under Mozambican land legislation, families who have occupied and farmed lands for more than a decade, such as those farming the lands of the old Unidade de Namele farm, are supposed to be granted DUATs that prohibit any company or state agency from displacing them from the lands unless it is clearly in the public interest, such as for the construction of hospitals, schools or highways.

However, local farmer leaders say that Mozaco has already evicted 1,500 farmers to make way for their operations. The organization ADECRU calculates that several thousand more will lose their lands if the company is allowed to expand to 20,000 hectares.7 And access to land is only part of what’s at stake for the communities: Mozaco no doubt chose the area because it is situated between two important rivers, the Malema and the Nataleia, where 4,500 families live and farm. These families now risk losing access to their lands and the water they need to farm and survive.

During the 2012-2013 season, Mozaco cultivated soybeans on about 200 hectares. In its second season, the company expanded to 400 hectares. Ten families lost their homes in the process, and were paid compensation ranging from MT3,000 ($90) to MT10,000 ($300). The local church of Santa Lucia was also destroyed and 1,500 farmers had their access to lands in the area taken away, without any compensation and in complete violation of the land law.

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