大規模海外農業投資による食農資源問題の先鋭化とアグロ・フード・レジームの再編

Abstract

International food price shocks in 2007/8, 2011 and 2012 caused large-scale foreign investment in land for the purpose of fostering food security. Large-scale land acquisitions have occasionally left small landholders and their communities in crisis of survival, because they meant the loss of the lands that were their major method of livelihood. In Japan, there are few research papers on such acts of ‘land grabbing’. However, the current administration of Japan promotes foreign agricultural investment, and introduced the so-called ProSAVANA project in Northern Mozambique which created severe negative impact on local societies. This paper examines the general trends in global land acquisition, followed by the political background of ProSAVANA, which is closely related with the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and African Agricultural Growth Corridor initiated at the World Economic Forum, and what is happening under ProSAVANA.The main purpose of the ProSAVANA project is to promote soybean production. If this purpose is fully realized, Mozambique can achieve the status of a major soybean exporting country. This change will reorganize agro-food regime in soybean, which means the movement of the new agro-food regime which integrates the whole process of the soybean supply chain by vertical division of labor in multinational agribusinesses and linkages with new agribusinesses in emerging countries like Brazil. Finally, I suggest some points to be discussed about large-scale land acquisition and raise the ethical question of the mission of the researcher who is engaged in studying such forms of land grabbing.