Article “Land for sugarcane” on the Italian monthly magazine “Africa”. The sugarcane industry in Malawi is directly connected to land-grabbing, which has led to the displacement of local communities. The Government of Malawi began promoting commercial agriculture and supporting land acquisition on behalf of investors interested in conducting large-scale agriculture. The aim was to encourage local farmers to substitute their traditional rice and cassava crop with sugarcane plantations and sell their yield to large sugar refining factories. The problem is that sugar production with its high demand for irrigation and other inputs, only requires large plots. Most of Malawi’s farmers, managing fields of less than a hectare, are forced to give up their land or alternatively to incur in high costs for the farming of their plantations. Finally, cocoa production poses serious environmental problems. A large part of the crops come from plots cultivated illegally, portions of forest that are theoretically protected and which instead have been purposely deforested.
