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Project February 13, 2018

Mozambique's Controversial Plan to Industrialize Food Production

Authors:
Mozambican authorities say the project will benefit small, medium and big famers. Image by Enrico Parenti. Mozambique, 2017.
Mozambican authorities say the project will benefit small, medium and big famers. Image by Enrico Parenti. Mozambique, 2017.

Launched in 2009, ProSavana is the world's biggest agro-industrial project: it aims to convert a 14-million-hectare area in northern Mozambique to commercial agriculture.

The project is expected to attract companies focused on large-scale, high-yield production on immense estates. Once implemented, it could displace thousands of small-scale producers (4.5 million people work and live in the area) and jeopardize the country's food sovereignty, since it is mainly designed to produce crops for export—especially profitable soybeans for China.

This project wants to shed light on this underreported story by questioning all of the stakeholders: the farmers who are protesting the project, government officials, and the entrepreneurs who are investing in the area with the support of Mozambique's government. The report will also be part of a documentary Liberti and Parenti are producing on the industrial livestock-soybean complex called "Soyalism," released in November 2018. Soyalism.com

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