Open letter to the Prime Minister on Food Security based on Sugar Estate Land and Infrastructure, and on our Massive Ocean Resources
14.01.2025
Yesterday two LALIT representatives went to the PMO office to hand over a letter on Food Security based on Sugar Estate Land and Infrastructure, and on our Massive Ocean Resources.
Prime Minister & Minister of Finance
Hon. Navin Ramgoolam
Treasury Building,
Intendance St, Port Louis
13 January, 2025
Dear Hon. Navin Ramgoolam,
LALIT writes to you both as Prime Minister and as Minister of Finance on an issue that, in fact, also concerns the Ministry responsible for food security, agriculture and fishing.
We write in two contexts: First, and principally, in response to your “State of the Economy” paper. Second, there is the incontrovertible fact that your Government is having to pick up the pieces after the Jugnauth Government’s negotiations with Britain that envision an economic “policy” based upon raising funds by “renting” part of the Chagos for continued use as a UK-US military base.* We believe this approach you have been landed with to be abject. The issue of Chagos-and-money needs urgently to be turned on its head: after the victories at the ICJ and the UN General Assembly, massive reparations are due, as of right, to the State of Mauritius for suffering 57 years of illegal military occupation.** That is the international law. That is where additional funds can come from, instead of from enslaving the country to a crumbling Empire that is accustomed to waging murderous and even unlawful wars, and now about to be led by an unpredictable dictator, and thus Mauritius would be forsaking all its allies at the UN over Chagos and taking money from its “unlawful occupier”, all the while sacrificing our future as a non-aligned state.
But, now, let us concentrate on some of the points raised in your “State of the Economy”. We propose to kickstart economic development based on food production. You say rightly that “Food security is a pressing issue, with almost 80% of current food consumption being imported.” We could not agree more. We see food production – using, in our opinion, sugar estate land and using existing sugar estate infrastructure – for import substitution and also for export of processed food products within the region. Together, we thus address the issues of the balance of payments***, foreign exchange, while assuring food sovereignty and stable employment in a large sector. All the while, we avoid binding ourselves to the US’s dangerous foreign military bases, which constitute the military basis for its form of ailing neo-colonialism.
We lay emphasis on putting pressure on the sugar estates to take their responsibility. They, as monopolisers of half the land, should be made to produce food on, say, one third of their land. They owe it to the people of the country precisely because they have monopolised and continue to monopolise the land. Inter-line cropping is also possible, as they convert. The State can encourage the sugar estates to convert to food production first by fiscal advantages, with subsidies moving from cane and sugar where necessary, and then move to legislation, as was resorted to during World War II. But to work, this will need proper stable employment, with long-term prospects – not seasonal, informal work with none of the conditions to which workers are now rightly accustomed. We know that Mauritians had to be bribed to leave sugar cane jobs (with little plots of land as well as lump sums), and finally hounded out of labouring jobs. We do not believe the bosses’ complaints about not finding “labour”.
We note that people, including in official documents like yours, are loath to see the problem for what it is. We can only put it down to a psychological, historic “fear” of the sugar bosses, who held so much power and still do. In the “State of the Economy”, you characterise Mauritius’ agriculture sector at one point, for example, in this curious way: “the small-scale farming nature of the Mauritian agricultural sector.” We believe that food security cannot rely only on small planters and kitchen gardens. It is absurd. This quotation hides the fact that half of all cane crushed in Mauritius comes from just three large estates: Terra, Omnicane and Alteo! Another proportion comes from huge planters, up to the size of Medine with its 10,000 arpents under cane (2021 figures). So, the land we need for food security is the sugar estate land, itself. We suggest, as we say, one third of it. Facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that for a large scale program of food production, arable land is needed, most of which, another fact, is owned and controlled by sugar estates.
LALIT has for many years campaigned for large scale land reform for this land to be used for food sovereignty instead of being destroyed to make way for luxury real estate projects, malls, golf courses, while the rest stays monopolised by cane plantation. We are here referring to agriculture on the island of Mauritius. Rodrigues Island is different. It already has considerable experience in food production that we can learn from.
We have also campaigned for the development of a sustainable fishing industry, to go alongside the agricultural production. The fishing produce can be canned and dried alongside the agricultural produce.
We are not the only ones saying Mauritius is exposed. For once, even the World Bank is talking sense:
“Mauritius has an opportunity to take advantage of the current COVID-19 crisis and reduce its high dependence on the global economy for its sugarcane, food imports, and tourism revenues, further promoting ... local food production.”****
This report even includes a visual that depicts a potential future without sugar production where land can be used for food security. One of the World Bank scenarios has 25% of Mauritius Island under food production!
What we in LALIT are talking about when we say food sovereignty is food production on a large scale, of:
Staples (like maize, breadfruit, yams, tapioca, potatoes and rice);
Dairy produce (mostly for milk);
Poultry (already well developed, but reliant on important food for the poultry);
Vegetables and Fruit (Not just grown, but also preserved by canning, freezing, freeze-drying and transformed into diversified foods like “zasar”, curry, “ladob”);
Fish and other sea foods (The State must at once move towards a national fishing industry like the Seychelles.)
Meat production (If fishing is increased, this can remain modest, including venison, pork, beef, and goat, including ideas like the integrated circular farms developed by the late, world-renowned scientist Professor Chan)
We make this list because politicians and journalists often confuse “food security” with “kitchen gardens” which, though laudable, do not constitute a program for nation-wide food security or food sovereignty.
There needs to be a plan accompanied by a political campaign for food security to become a reality.
To your credit, in 2007, you attempted to get the MSPA to provide 1,000 arpents of land to be used for food security. The plan was based on leasing the land to planters for SME-scale food security projects. It did not work. Why? We believe that it is because there was no political plan supporting it, and that small-scale food production cannot be the backbone of food security. In the future, we need more land, and it must go with:
1. Transferring the massive State support given to the sugar/cane industry to the food production industry.
2. Industrial-scale food preservation and transformation industry, as well as storage, transport, marketing, agricultural research, irrigation facilities have to be properly nurtured by the State.
3. Stable long-term employment has to be assured for thousands of people working in the food production sector on a long-term basis – whether in cultivation, irrigation, food preservation, storage, food transportation, marketing, research. This is large scale employment that is needed, not only SME-scale production.
4. This will become more profitable as the effects of global industrial pollution by shipping and aviation become more onerous, and are incorporated into expenses for food imports.
5. Capital must not be allowed, let alone encouraged, to shift to speculative sectors such as real estate and the financial sector.
In fact, the extent of arable land decreased from over 92,000 hectares in 1995 to 75,000 hectares in 2021 (World Bank figures). Some 42,000 hectares of this was cane land in 2021 (Statistics Mauritius). More and more cane land is being abandoned every year as the sugar industry becomes unviable despite extensive state subsidy. Instead the State encourages the luxury real estate sector through big tax concessions and land conversion permits to sugar estates and big agricultural cane land owners over many years (Integrated Resort Scheme (IRS), the Real Estate Scheme (RES) and Property Development Scheme (PDS) and the Invest Hotel Scheme (IHS).
You acknowledge this in “The State of the Economy”, when you say, “the bulk of private sector investment was made in the real estate sector. There is, therefore, a definite lack of investment in productive sectors which explains the sluggish growth of the emerging sectors and very low job creation.”
For a large-scale food sovereignty program to succeed there needs to be a political plan to shift the sugar-cane industry to massive food production. This can be done in several phases:
Announcing a moratorium on state support to the sugar industry and real estate sector, and that such support will be shifted to food production (including a sustainable fishing industry), and at the same time giving sugar estates, planters, unions and co-operatives the opportunity to propose a program for this shift on at least a third of their agricultural land, in the first phase;
Should the sugar industry not be able to provide a plan, then the government will need to pass laws, and come up with its own plan.
In the meantime, to preserve arable land on which to plant food crops and to protect the environment that sustains us all, the government needs to:
1. Stop giving out land conversion permits.
2. Stop giving tax concessions to the luxury villa real estate sector.
3. Prevent the sale of land and real estate on the international market.
4. Prepare legislation for sugar estates and big cane-planters to re-organise cane plantation so that intercropping of cane with other food crops can be achieved, in the short and medium term. The MSIRI in 2006 already published research on how this can be done in a way that benefits both cane and food-crops.
5. Preparing all related public institutions (such as the Mauritius Cane Industry Authority, Agricultural Marketing Board, Landscope, Sugar Investment Trust, Rose Belle Sugar Estate, FAREI, EDB, CEB and all other support-institutions of relevant Ministries) for this shift.
6. As concerns the fishing industry, to seek assistance from the Seychelles on how to develop a sustainable fishing industry. Consider a joint venture with the Seychelles which has this experience.
And as important, there needs to be constant political mobilisation towards achieving such change. Which is what LALIT has consistently done since 1984. We call on your newly elected Government to embark on such a course. You have a mandate. At the same time, any additional funds from reparations for unlawful post-colonial military occupation of Chagos can be used to strengthen the conversion to a different agricultural base from cane and sugar. A nation-wide debate – not just in the media, but also in every village hall and every municipal hall – needs to be launched. Again, you have the mandate for this. This is the only way to gather the political will to face up to a dangerous future: what with two different wars already being waged – one in Europe and the other in the Middle East – as well as a future one being threatened by the USA against China. There is also the spectre of nuclear disaster. And what with the expectation of more droughts and floods, as well as the danger of species collapse, and more viral pandemics, all as a result of the man-made pollution that is changing nature beyond its capacity to reproduce itself, and threatening even the climate of mother earth, it is a time of all dangers. Food security at least protects us from some of the threats we face.
Yours sincerely,
Rajni Lallah for LALIT
Notes
* Chagossian families also need reparations, but that is a separate issue.
** This comes at a time when the UK and US are part of Israel’s genocide in Palestine, while Mauritius has thus far taken a principled stand against both Israelis occupation and its genocide. However dire the economic straits are, we cannot simply forsake our “non-aligned” status, and abandon all our allies that helped up end this colonial occupation of part of our country, in exchange for money. In fact, it was the African union with the support of States in the decolonisation movement that led to the victory of the ICJ ruling for the lawful completion of the decolonisation of the Republic of Mauritius together with the United Nations General Assembly resolution that UK stops its illegal colonial occupation of the Chagos. Today, we have come to the point where continued bankrupt economic politics are bringing us to the point where our independence and sovereignty is being undermined. It is time for a major shift in the politics of the economy.
***Most worrying is the fact that the overall balance of payments, which has historically been in surplus, was in deficit for the last two consecutive years
**** Source: From Dec 2020 Mauritius Sugarcane Sector Review Competitiveness Analysis by World Bank experts in response to the last government’s realisation of the sugarcane sector’s heavy and growing dependency on public funds and state institutional support.
