The TPLF thugs are dolling out large tracts of land to foreign commercial interests for nominal prices, particulary in Gambella and Benishangul Gumuz regions and seriously undermining the livelihoods of the people.
The blind argument for this move by the TPLF thugs is that the move will ensure natinal food security and modernize agriculture that could be replicated by the locals. I have no trust in this argument for so may reasons. First and foremost, there is no guaranty that the invesots will sell the food they produced in the domestic market for affordable prices.
On the other hand there is a fact that ownership/access to land provides so amny other seondary rights for the land users that will not be available when the land is transfered to commercial interests. For example, farmers who have had access to the land had not only the right to cultivate the land and harves crops, but also access to grazing for their livestock, wood for energy and other household needs, to grow fruits, etc. to supplement their income. Under the ownership of the commercial investor, the farmers lose all these secondary rights. How is this to be compensated by the investor? Will they have to be forced to sell their livestock for lack of grazing land or are thet to pay for the graing land to the investor? If they are forced to sell, will they get the right price? As all the farmers will be forced to sell at the same time, prices of livesotck will be dipressed and the farmers will lose money. If they have to keep their livestock, they will have extra cost of paying for the investor for the grazing of their livestock. Where will they get the extra money? Will the investor pay the farmers who will be converted to laborers enough salary to pay for all these extra costs?
We are already witnessing that local farmers where land is being dolled out are expressing their grievances and are being silenced and killed by the regime. Supressing these expressions will not halt the grievances. It will only aggravate the simmering of the tensions that will eventually erupt into violence that would be most costly to handle for the nation.
