Biofuels Land Grab: Guatemala's Farmers Lose Plots and Prosperity to "Energy Independence" [Slide Show]
Across the globe, local farmers are being displaced to make way for energy crop plantations
Biofuels Land Grab: Guatemala's Farmers Lose Plots and Prosperity to "Energy Independence" [Slide Show]
- PROPERTY RIGHTS: Amalia Luc is a proud Q'eqchi' farmer and exhibits the title to her property. She works her land in a traditional diversified way to feed her family, selling excess produce on the local market. But in many cases, such land deeds serve the cause of powerful companies who put pressure on individual farmers, effectively obliging them to sell their land. © Eitan Haddok
- WATER RIGHTS: In Playitas, Alta Verapaz, land grabbing is also an opportunity for water grabbing. In this area large palm plantations will soon expand to the edge of this river, which is the only source of water for the area's rural Mayan communities. Intensive monoculture farming, in this case of palm trees for their oil, often causes water pollution. © Eitan Haddok
- POLOCHIC VALLEY: Violent and brutal forced evictions are one of the primary methods of land grabbing. Pictured here are Q'eqchi' Mayan farmers standing in front of burned huts in their destroyed village. Under the authority of a judge and with police support, armed militias working for agro-industrial company Chabil Utzah evicted 13 Maya communities this past March from the land they had occupied and worked. © Eitan Haddok
- PALM OR MAIZE: Palm trees produce no oil in their first years following planting, so agro-industrial companies rent the strips of land between the trees to workers who grow corn there now that there is a shortage of land elsewhere. This approach reduces opposition from local indigenous rural populations, but once the trees yield oil this land will no longer be rented because the palm groves become too dense for other agriculture. © Eitan Haddok
- PALM PLANTATION: Intensive monoculture of palm and sugarcane is expanding as production of crops for biofuels is expected to quadruple within the next decade. These large investments also came with promises of employment, infrastructure development and technological transfer, very few of which have been kept. © Eitan Haddok
- NURSERY: Breeding grounds of African palms in Polochic Valley, northern Guatemala. As in many countries in the developing world, powerful agro-industrial companies and landowners take control of land to grow sugarcane or palm oil for biofuels at the expense of food for local consumption as well as for sale in regional and world markets. © Eitan Haddok
