The French agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire, centre, gestures as he poses with his G20 nations counterparts in Paris. Photograph: Ian Langsdon/EPA
Background
France pushed for the first ever meeting of G20 agriculture ministers to deal with volatility in food prices. World food prices hit a record high earlier this year, sparking fears of a repeat of the food riots in 2007-2008. Britain is keen to see an increase in food productivity in the developing world to improve a global food system that leaves around 925 million people hungry. The action plan agreed on Thursday will be presented to G20 leaders at their summit in November.
Speculation
President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday again banged the drum on speculative activity, which some blamed for high food prices. "A market that is not regulated is not a market, but a lottery where fortune favours the most cynical instead of rewarding work, investment and value creation," he said in a speech. But G20 agriculture ministers have essentially handed over the problem to their financial counterparts. "We strongly encourage G20 finance ministers to take the appropriate decisions for a better regulation and supervision of agricultural financial markets," says the action plan. The plan also looks forward to recommendations by a commission on securities on regulation and supervision to "address market abuses and manipulation".
Biofuels
A report in June by the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Monetary Fund and other international bodies clearly said the demand for food and feed crops for the production of biofuels was a significant factor behind price rises, but the plan avoids such direct language because the US and Brazil are big biofuel producers and watered down this section. The plan says ministers recognise the need to further analyse all factors that influence the relationship between biofuels production and food availability; the response of agriculture to price increase and volatility and sustainability of agriculture production. Activists from ActionAid and Oxfam say this is very weak.
Early warning
The agricultural market information system (Amis) will provide accurate and timely information on crop supply, demand and food stocks in an effort to curb volatility. Amis will be based at the FAO with a secretariat that will include the World Bank and other international bodies. Amis will encourage major players, including those in the private sector, to "share data, to enhance existing information systems, and promote greater shared understanding of food price developments".
Food productivity
The G20 agriculture ministers say they will give "special attention to smallholders, especially women, in particular in developing countries, and to young farmers" to improve productivity. No mention of figures, prompting criticism from campaigners that this is just rhetoric. It is generally recognised that to feed a world population expected to reach 9.1 billion in 2050, agricultural production will have to increase by 70%, more specifically by almost 100% in developing countries.
Export restrictions
The ministers agreed to remove food export restrictions or extraordinary taxes for food purchased for humanitarian purposes, and agreed not to impose them in the future. Russia's decision to restrict grain exports contributed to a jump in prices. There is a call for a successful conclusion to the Doha trade round that is supposed to benefit developing countries.
Food reserves
The action plan calls for a pilot programme for small, targeted, regional emergency humanitarian food reserves. The pilot plan will cover a limited group of countries from the world's 48 poorest countries, those classified as least developed by the UN.
The daughter of a South African photocopy salesman wore a stunning Armani gown
cut from 130 metres of silk and studded with 40,000 crystals.
Archbishop Bernard Barsi of Monaco
asked each whether they accepted each other "for better, for worse."
Both replied with a firm: "Yes."
Then, in front of witnesses, the couple - the Princess, noticeably less tense
than she had been at the first ceremony, and occasionally smiling -
exchanged 18-carat rings in white gold and platinum by the House of Cartier.
South African singer Pumela Matshikiza celebrated with a popular, upbeat
wedding song from Charlene's homeland: "Diviner of the roadways, the
knock knock beetle / It just passed by here, the knock knock beetle."
Around 800 guests attended the service in the palace, and another 3,800 were
outside watching on a large screen, cheering as popular guests like James
Bond actor Roger Moore and former French first lady Bernadette Chirac
arrived.
Aside from France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and the kings and queens of
Sweden and Belgium, the crowd included fashion designers, models, sportsmen,
more minor royals and senior officials from the tiny principality.
Organisers hoped the glamour of the spectacle would distract from gossip after
Monaco officials privately admitted there is "truth" in a rumour
that Albert faces a paternity test following a claim by a pregnant former
lover.
Reports the princess was furious and threatened to leave when she learned her
prince's latest secret had overshadowed the build-up to the wedding, but the
event itself has gone smoothly and the Monegasques are philosophical.
Organisers admitted, however, that there had been a "hiccup" in
preparations following an incident at Monaco's heliport, but did not confirm
reports that Charlene had contemplated fleeing home to South Africa.
"We can't remake the prince. It's a modern marriage. Charlene has known
him for a long time and accepts it," shrugged a 30-something
wellwisher, insisting on remaining anonymous like many of Monaco's
7,810-strong native population.
Albert, at 53, is two decades older than his blonde bride and has two children
from previous relationships.
But even if a third or a fourth is confirmed he will still not have an
official heir until his lawful wife bears him one.
"We just want the Grimaldi dynasty to continue," said a 72-year-old
Monegasque, a direct descendant of a group of Genoan migrants who settled
the rocky Riviera outcrop and future tax haven in 1775.
Guests arrived in a cavalcade of 200 BMW 7 Series limousines and striding
across the red carpet towards the palace, with early arrivals including
Czech supermodel Karolina Kurkova and retired tennis ace Henri Leconte.
Pop star Jean-Michel Jarre received warm applause from locals still grateful
for the previous night's spectacular concert. Heels were high, hats were
broad and many guests seemed to have ignored a request for covered
shoulders.
The bride had appeared tense but poised at her civil marriage ceremony on
Friday in the throne room of her palace, but relaxed slightly at a buffet
for Monaco's people, where she posed for pictures and hugged babies.
Later, she and the prince joined an estimated 80,000 people, double the normal
population of the state, at the waterfront for Jarre's show.
The wedding feast will be held at the opera house opposite the casino.
For the Sunday brunch that will cap the wedding festivities in Monaco, known
as a magnet for the rich and famous, the princess is expected to wear a
Giorgio Armani Prive silk satin duchesse in bright green, with pleat detail
on the bodice and skirt.
People in Karamoja, Uganda, receive aid from the World Food Programme. There are problems in this region, but Uganda's political situation is not at the crisis point reached in Somalia. Photograph: Marc Hofer/WFP
This week it has been raining in the part of Karamoja where I'm staying. Last week it did not. The weather here is unpredictable.
Karamoja is a wide swath of semi-arid land in the north-west of Uganda – it runs along the Ugandan side of the Uganda-Kenya border. It covers an area of more than 27,000 sq km and has a population of more than 1 million people. When current news reports add Uganda to the list of drought-affected countries (alongside Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia), it is Karamoja that is being referred to.
People here are waiting to see if the rains are enough to bulk up the crops that are soon to be harvested. The April rains that were meant to get the crops growing came late, and last week there was considerable tension as to whether or not the second rains would come. Some people were accused of stopping the rain – there is a widely held belief that individuals can prevent rain – and were punished. These accusations make sense to people for a variety of reasons, not least the way the rain falls in a capricious way. It can bucket down in one village, while the next village remains dry.
The situation here is not the crisis facing Somalia. As John Vidal argued on the Guardian's Comment is Free site, droughts that turn into famines are man-made disasters. That people will die in Somalia this year is not down to drought alone, but because of the standoff between different warring factions within the country, and the way different international actors make the crisis in Somalia worse. While we may think of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia as a "biblical disaster" being visited on an impoverished nation, the deaths were largely the result of an ongoing civil war, the collapse of government services and the decision by the ruling regime to resettle rural populations.
The Ugandan state, for all its faults, is not Somalia. It is a fairly democratic regime. The immensity of the disaster unfolding to the east of Karamoja is less tenable here. This does not mean that life in Karamoja is easy, or that people are not struggling to make ends meet. But it does mean that if we want to understand why droughts play out differently in neighbouring regions, you have to think about the politics. Karamoja is fortunate in that it is not in Somalia. Though you could also add that it is unfortunate in the way it is treated as the poor relation within Uganda.
Pastoralism – moving cattle in search of grazing – is still a part of people's lives here, alongside the cultivation of crops, mostly sorghum. People dress differently and have a different way of life from other Ugandans. The region, typically described as a "problem" by Ugandan politicians, is imagined to be lawless, backward and ridden with guns. Christianity, which is strongly identified with in the rest of the country, has a more patchy existence here. There is an "otherness" to Karamoja. The region is regarded as set apart from the rest of the country, and is treated accordingly.
The Ugandan state – both colonial and post-colonial – is more casually violent in the way it deals with people here. A recent "disarmament" effort was far more violent than the government's crackdown on opposition protests in Kampala. Cattle raiding, where groups of men move to neighbouring areas and steal livestock, has also resulted in a lot of deaths.
Karamoja is a landscape populated by NGOs, aid agencies and government initiatives. All are trying to deliver "sustainable" development. Aid money trickles down in an uneven fashion, and "development" produces something of a dependency culture. Both in terms of ordinary people depending on the work of aid agencies and the way agencies depend on Karamoja as a place to work.
Last week I visited the Kotido office of one such agency: the World Food Programme. The WFP has been in the region for many years, providing food to people when there is a shortage. In the WFP's office there was a printout of a piece by the BBC's Humphrey Hawksley pinned to the board behind the reception. This was the article, published in January this year, that discussed the WFP's decision to reduce food relief to Karamoja. Food relief is currently targeted only at pregnant mothers, young children, and those assessed to come from extreme, vulnerable households. The blanket handouts are a thing of the past. In Hawksley's analysis this was a radical step, a real gamble.
But the uneven way in which Karamoja gets dealt with means that this feels like a less radical step in practice than it does on paper. I found little evidence that people regarded themselves as part of some grand experiment. The WFP has been here a long time, and changes what it does. People are used to that. In conversation, I found that concerns were raised less about the cutting of universal food relief, than with the WFP's inability to meet its current commitments. The failure to provide schools with enough food for three meals a day, for example, is widely criticised. At the moment most children get one meal a day of a thin maize porridge. As a result, the schools have decided to close early, meaning pupils will not complete the syllabus for this term.
This failure to provide school meals places a considerable burden on families. It has been like this for some months. It is the sort of sustained failure that is less likely to occur in other parts of Uganda.
Karamoja is treated differently from the rest of the country, but Uganda is not Somalia. The political crisis that produces famine there is not here. This morning the sun is shining. More rain is needed.
THE FRONT RUNNERS
Emmerson Mnangagwa, 65, was Mr Mugabe’s election officer in the violent
2008 presidential run-off.
He is seen as the instigator of most political violence against Zanu PF’s
political opponents and widely blamed for the massacres of opposition
supporters in Matabeleland between 1983 - 1987.
As a young guerilla, the now Defence Minister was tortured by Rhodesian
security forces during the indepence war.
A lawyer by training, he despises Mr Mugabe’s war-time commander Solomon
Mujuru and has never denied his presidential ambitions.
While known to be extremely wealthy, his lifestyle is less ostentatious than
many in Zanu PF.
Many Zimbabweans fear Mr Mnanagwa more than they fear Mr Mugabe and some
regional leaders would be concerned if he became president.
Joyce Mujuru, 55, the youngest member of Mr Mugabe’s first cabinet and
wife of Solomon Mujuru, his wartime commander, is presently one of two
national vice presidents.
A teenager when she joined Mr Mugabe’s anti-Rhodesian forces in Mozambique,
she is popular in her rural home area and is seen by some regional leaders,
especially South Africa, as an uncontroversial successor to Mr Mugabe,
untainted by allegations of involvement in violence.
A senior member of the Salvation Army, she also has a reasonable working
relationship with Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai,
presently prime minister in the inclusive government.
She is admired by many for the grace with which she endures her husband's
public relationships with younger women. The couple are seen by many
Zimbaweans as wealthy by unknown means.
THE OUTSIDERS:
General Constantine Chiwenga, 55, commander of the Zimbabwe Defence
Forces, is close to Mr Mugabe and chairs the JOC, which many accuse of
planning and managing political violence against Morgan Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change over the past ten years.
Gen Chiwenga began his political career by fighting with Mr Mugabe in the war
of independence. He is now one of the richest men in the security forces and
subject to EU sanctions.
He hit the headlines before the 2008 elections, saying he would not salute Mr
Tsvangirai if he were to win.
Before he separated from his wife Jocelyn, the pair seized one of Zimbabwe's
most productive white-owned farms, a move that reportedly earned them some
$20m.
The farm's previous owner, Roger Staunton, claims that Mrs Chiwenga told him
"she had not tasted white blood since 1980 and that she needed just the
slightest excuse to kill someone."
Dr Sydney Sekeramayi, 67, has been in Mr Mugabe’s cabinet since
independence in 1980.
Although a member of the president's inner circle of the party, he has managed
to avoid appearing in the headlines and accusations of involvement in the
more extreme political violence against the MDC during the last 11 years.
A medical doctor by training who studied in Sweden, he has not yet been
implicated as a looter of state assets like some of his contemporaries.
He is presently minister of state security, in charge of the feared Central
Intelligence Organisation.
Zanu PF could choose Mr Sekeramayi to succeed Mugabe because of his less
controversial history and his long involvement with the party.
Patagonian steppe: a summer day near Bariloche in Rio Negro state, Argentina. Photograph: Marcos Radicella/Getty Creative
The attraction to the Chinese of access to an area of land in Patagonia larger than Cornwall is obvious. As China's economy grows and its population becomes more urbanised, diets are changing rapidly. People are eating more industrially produced meat and dairy products, and buying more processed foods.
Soya is the feedstock for this revolution, but demand for it can no longer be met within China. So the Chinese state-owned agribusiness company Beidahuang has joined the global scramble for land and water that has accelerated since food prices spiked in 2008.
Last year it was confirmed that the company had signed an agreement, with the government of Patagonia's Río Negro province, which provides the framework for it to acquire up to 320,000 hectares (790,000 acres) of privately owned farmland, along with irrigation rights and a concession on the San Antonio port.
Details of the deal, alleged to have been kept quiet, have been emerging in recent weeks as Chinese technicians have started work.
Beidahuang has also reported a 2008 deal on 200,000 ha in the Philippines, and says it plans to buy palm oil plantations and grain terminals this year as it pursues the Chinese government's policy of securing food supply lines from abroad.
Beidahuang, based in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, is the leading soya producer in China and one of the country's five largest soya processors. It also raises more than 600,000 cows, 1.3m pigs and more than 6m chickens at any one time.
The company believes its expertise in large-scale farming can be transferred to Argentina, according to Juan Manuel Accatino, the region's deputy secretary for agriculture in Río Negro, who was close to the deal. The arrangement made good economic sense, Accatino said. "We can foresee global shortages of land, water and energy, and Río Negro can offer all three."
Argentinian environmental groups and constitutional experts are outraged. Eduardo Barcesat is a top constitutional lawyer who has been helping the federal government of the Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, draft legislation that would restrict foreign ownership of Argentinian land. The laws would also provide, for the first time, a full register of all landholding so that authorities can keep track of who owns what.
"Chinese and Indian people have been coming to Argentina over the last five years and would be happy to buy all our land, whatever the price. American businesses have been buying access to our water," Barcesat said. "We need our own people to eat well first, and after that we can feed the rest of the world. We want more small and middle-sized owners, we don't like the excessive concentration, and we want farmers who will be careful with the land, not exploit it."
Research from the International Land Coalition, and Oxfam Novib, the Netherlands affiliate of Oxfam International, has identified more than 1,200 international land deals covering more than 80m hectares since 2000 – the vast majority of them after 2007. More than 60% of the land targeted was in Africa.
The Río Negro region is famous for its fruit orchards, which produce 70% of the country's apples and pears, exports eaten in northern Europe when the fruit season in that continent ends.
Environmentalists in Río Negro say the Chinese arrival will mean heavy use of agrochemicals, ecological degradation and severe strain on the region's water resources. Some of the land in question is virgin forest that would be deforested.
Dams have already cut the flow of the Negro river, they say, and Chinese plans to invest $20m (£12m) immediately to build irrigation infrastructure would strain resources further. The campaigners say that since soya cultivation is highly mechanised it will prompt unemployment in the area, as it has elsewhere in the country where many rural communities have seen an increase in deep poverty as jobs are lost.
Elvio Mendioroz, president of Uñopatún, an agro-ecoclogical group that opposes the Chinese deal, said the agreement had been kept secret. "China has run out of land to feed its people, and is suffering drought and soil erosion, so they come here.
"But it will create the same problems for us. There has been no consultation, yet it's already signed."
Accatino thinks the deal has been misunderstood. Río Negro's provincial government was merely acting as a facilitator for the Chinese, he said, who would have to negotiate with the private owners of land to buy sections. The port concession, reported as being for 50 years, would depend on an evaluation of its feasibility.
Accatino said: "We will take into account the environmental concern about further expansion of soya and dependency of this monoculture. We would never endanger the Negro river."
