S. J.,
Sinjo village, Malen Chiefdom, Sierra Leone
Today I have a quarter of what I used to have. The food situation is far worse than before because there is no more farming. We used to eat two times a day; now we eat only once a day and we have to buy everything. I paid 200,000 SLL to the Socfin [SAC] foreman for my four children to get employment. I told them [my children] I am going through challenges and that they have to work; four sons work now for the company. One son I have taken out of school to work in the plantations instead.
Betty Sengeh,
Sinjo village, Malen Chiefdom, Sierra Leone
Sometimes our family has to take credit or a loan; currently our debts amount to 1,100,000 SLL. Out of this, 200,000 SLL are food debts. It is the first time that we have had food debts. For the past two months I have not been able to pay back any debt because my children who work with the company were inadequately paid. We expected annual payments for the plantations we owned, but this did not materialize. I was employed by Socfin, but then I got sick and had to stop. Previously I used to work on our own farmland, now I am just sitting at home.… For the short term, I do not see any benefit in this development. For the long term, I don’t know. I have little understanding of what they want to achieve. If I do get that understanding, it may help me to determine whether there is future benefit. We don’t understand much, because we see how the chief, the company, and the authorities are more together than they are with us.
Sama Amara,
Kortumahun village, Malen Chiefdom, Sierra Leone
The resources we had from the plantations are depleted. For example, cassava and rice were available all year round. I used to store palm oil and groundnuts throughout the year and would sell some whenever food was needed.… Today, our family consumes 8 cups of rice a day; previously we used to eat 20 cups. Still we try to eat two times a day.
Memai Charles,
Kortumahun village, Malen Chiefdom, Sierra Leone
There is no alternative to earn a living. If there were an alternative, I would not be working with Socfin [SAC]. When I was farming independently, I could decide how much I would eat and how much I would sell. This was good. Now, I am constricted with a small amount of money, and I have to buy everything. It is pretty difficult now, because all things are being measured. When we did our farming there was no need to measure. And the cost of living is increasing.
Welthungerhilfe had been working in Pujehun District since 2007, engaging with smallholder farmers to rehabilitate rural infrastructure, increase incomes, and foster food security through efficient and environmentally safe use of available natural resources. In 2011 Socfin Agricultural Company Sierra Leone Ltd (SAC) — a subsidiary of the corporation Socfin registered in Luxemburg — leased 6,500 hectares of land in the area to grow oil palm and rubber for export. The lease covers approximately one-quarter of the area of Malen Chiefdom and includes 24 villages (see map above). It is effective for 50 years, with the possibility of extension for another 21 years.
As a direct result of this lease agreement, smallholder farmers no longer have access to agricultural land and forested areas, and most project activities that Welthungerhilfe had undertaken in partnership with local farmers have had to stop. In this case, as in many others, there are two major concerns relating to the land deal: the way in which the acquisition is decided upon and the impact on local food and livelihood security (Anseeuw et al. 2012b).
“There was never a chance to say ‘no’ to the land deal; we felt coerced.”
Rural land in Sierra Leone is held by landowning families, with a chieftaincy structure that plays a significant administrative and custodial role. There exists a strong, pervasive notion of the fundamental inalienability of land from the landowning extended families and chiefdoms.
Thus, traditionally land is not leased but allocated. Statutory law, however, provides a procedure for non-natives to acquire leaseholds, requiring the consent of both the chiefdom and local councils. Investors can either lease land directly from the landowners or sublease from the government as the primary leaseholder.
In Malen Chiefdom, the SAC investment was presented as a far smaller deal than was actually the case. Local landowners and users were informed only after the decision had been made by the tribal authorities and were told to thumb print or sign without knowing or understanding the details of the agreement. Indeed, it was a full three months after the contract had been signed that it was fully read out publicly with ad hoc translation into the local language (see Box 4.1 below).
The land lease rent, amounting to US$5 per acre (US$12.50 per hectare) per year, was fixed by the government rather than negotiated with farmers. Landowners receive only 50 percent of the yearly lease payment, while the other half is divided between the different levels of government administration (the district and the chiefdom each receive 20 percent, and the national government receives 10 percent).
At the time the agreement was concluded, some villages, hoping for new employment and education opportunities, accepted the terms imposed. The anticipated opportunities, however, did not materialize. By August 2011, two more villages that had been more favourable toward the deal initially, had become critical.
“We used to have far more food.”
In times gone by, Malen Chiefdom was a farming society with a considerable degree of self-sufficiency. Today, it is a quasi-landless society dependent on uncertain and irregular demand for labor and suffering all the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with such dependency.
When SAC took over the land, farmers received a one-time payment amounting to 1 million leones (SLL) (approximately US$220) for every acre of oil palm plantation lost. No compensation was offered for other crops. This amount is relatively small compared with the annual income farmers would otherwise have earned — income that many families used to pay to send their children to school.
In the smallholder cultivation system, each family member contributed to the farm’s success. Today, the large-scale plantation requires less labor, and former farm households must rely on the income of individual family members. Jobs are largely casual, and labor is recruited on a day-to-day basis. While the plantation attracts a lot of laborers from outside the area, no provision is made for the employment of those women and men who have leased their land.
Although payment levels at the plantations are in accordance with similar investment projects in Sierra Leone, a daily wage of US$2.20 (SLL 10,000) is insufficient to cover the food needs of a family, especially in view of rising consumer prices. Between May 2011 and May 2012, market prices for food in the region affected by the large-scale land acquisitions have risen by 27 percent, on average (see Table 4.1).
As the level of self-sufficiency falls and the price of food rises, access to sufficient food is becoming an issue of concern for many. All those interviewed in May 2012 cited a fall in both the quantity and quality of food available to them since the SAC deal. In particular, interviewees said that they consume less meat since bush meat is much harder to find following the clearing of forested areas for the SAC plantation.
The conversion of former agricultural areas and bush land into plantations has had other serious consequences. People are increasingly concerned about the loss of firewood (the primary source of domestic energy, as in most of Sub-Saharan Africa; and more difficult access to herbal medicines.