DAR ES SALAAM - Tanzania urgently needs to put in place a policy framework to guide biofuel crops production and stave off the danger of serious food shortages in communities around biofuel plantations, a new study has warned.
“The government of is on the forefront encouraging the production of biofuels. However, there is no policy and regulatory framework to guide investment decisions on such production in the country,” says ActionAid, an international non-governmental agency advocating for poverty reduction.
In its study findings revealed at the weekend, the agency recommended action on the policy noting that it would help mitigate a number of effects and impacts that farming biofuel crops has on the society and the environment.
ActionAid presented its report to participants of a one-day workshop held on Saturday as Tanzania observed the World Food Day. Participants of the workshop included farmers drawn from six districts -- Rufiji, Kisarawe, Bagamoyo, Lindi, Kilwa and Arusha -- where foreign investors have opened up biofuel plantations.
According to the study, land conflicts, food shortages and social upheavals were some of critical issues that the villagers had to grapple with in a vacuum of a specific policy to guide the biofuel industry.
In the absence of such a policy, the government has been caught in a situation where it has had to borrow some clauses of other policies to guide investment decisions.
“However, these policies were formulated for other purposes, and for this reason, they are not adequate for biofuels investments, due to the complexity of this kind of investment,” said ActionAid.
No official reaction to the report was immediately obtainable. Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives minister, Mr Stephen Wassira, was out of the country and deputy, Dr David Mathayo, was not returning calls by this paper.
Meanwhile, the permanent secretary in the ministry of Lands and Human Settlement Development said he could not comment on the issue since it was weekend. Telephone calls to minister for Energy and Minerals, Mr William Ngeleja could not go through.
Speaking to The Citizen on the sidelines of the workshop, Prof Issa Shivji, one of the founders of HakiArdhi, a non-governmental organisation advocating for land rights in the country, stressed that embracing biofuel farming without proper policies would not do good to the nation.
If allowed to continue without proper guidelines, biofuel farming would have adverse consequences to farmers in the country, Prof Shivji cautioned.
Known as the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute, HakiArdhi was founded in 1994 and registered as a non-governmental not-for profit company out of the need to generate and sustain public debate on issues of land tenure in rural areas. ActionAid has observed in its report that large-scale plantations of biofuel crops were taking up large pieces of land, leading to several social impacts on communities in the neighbourhood.
“Such impacts involve displacement of people, loss of property, creation of pressure on land resources and other social tensions,” ActionAid said in the report.
Despite the negative consequences of biofuel crops, the international agency noted that there were benefits as well and suggested that the new industry should not be abandoned altogether.
For safeguarding land rights of smallholder farmers, the Ngo suggested that foreign investors should only be tasked to ensure value addition during crop processing, while actual production of biofuel feed stocks should be restricted to small farmers contracted by investors.
Villagers at the workshop denounced the claim of creating more jobs by the multinational investing in the industry. They charged that local people were actually left in the cold as a result of the new plantations.
Narrating their experience, some villagers said only a few people were actually employed on the plantations compared to the numbers of villagers were evicted to give room to biofuel crops. They said that wages paid to farm workers were not sufficient to meet their basic needs including food.
Furthermore, they accused some investors of diverting to other activities besides biofuel crop farming. Mr Seleman Matumla from Kilwa, for instance, told the gathering that instead of cultivating the intended crops, some investors who acquired big chunks of land in the district had retorted to lumbering.
ActionAid notes in its report that export of raw biofuel feedstocks denies employment opportunities to locals in the chain of value addition, causes loss of export gains, in addition to untapped technical skills and blocking technology transfer.
“The government should ban export of raw biofuel feedstocks to maximise
the potential benefits that could be realized from biofuel investments,” said the NGO.
On land acquisition, the study finds that the exercise involves several social impacts to local communities neighbouring a particular area intended for investment. This may involve displacement of people, loss of property and might create pressure on land resources and other social tensions.
“That is why the biofuels draft guidelines prohibit displacement of people for biofuels development and encourages the use of outgrowers’ schemes or hybrid of outgrowers and plantation schemes,” says the report.
Mr Ramadhan Athuman, a resident of Kisarawe who has been affected by biofuel project, blamed government leaders for ‘forcing’ villagers to accept the investors, who have failed to implement what they had promised.
“An investor was brought to our village by government officials who told us that the project had already been approved by the upper levels and we have no choice but to accept applications to clear village land for the proposed project,” he said.
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