Tag Archives: monoculture

War in Syria, land and agribusiness

This is an excellent read by Jonathon Porritt exploring the overlap between land, agribusiness, war and migration. It includes the following quote by Megan Perry:

“The (Syrian) Government had been pursuing a policy of agricultural intensification and economic liberalisation, based on the expansion of irrigated crops for export such as wheat and cotton that were reliant on chemical fertilisers. The chemical inputs and monocultural cropping contributed to the degradation of Syria’s soils, while poor irrigation infrastructure led to salinization, particularly in areas such as the Euphrates. And with the Government’s decision to cut subsidies to fertiliser, diesel, pesticides and seeds in the 2000s, many small-scale farmers could no longer afford the inputs on which their crops had come to depend.

Syria’s grazing land also struggled under intensification. Former Bedouin commons had been opened up to unrestricted grazing, turning the fragile ecosystem of the Syrian steppe, an area that covers half the country’s land mass, into an eroded desert. In 1950, there were three million sheep grazing the steppe, but by 1998, there were over fifteen million.”

That particular tale is all too familiar in all too many countries – and there are many experts in the world of mainstream agribusiness who are still keen to do exactly the same across the whole of Africa, regardless of the vast weight of evidence we now have as to the calamitous consequences of that process of intensification.

The calamity in Syria could not be starker, with 80% of the remaining population facing dire poverty, with sky-rocketing food prices, and with all factions involved in the conflict using ‘food as a weapon’ to secure their military objectives.