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French public aid to agriculture projects in the Global South: the schizophrenia of the government

The database developed by BASIC on the agricultural projects funded by the French State in countries eligible to Official Development Assistance enables to query on 1,500 keywords and variants. It has required the consolidation and cleansing of data from 7 public databases and several institutional websites, bringing together 9,571 project lines corresponding to 5.8 billion euros public financing between 2009 and 2018.

Thanks to this tool, the 3 NGOs (CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Oxfam France and Action Contre la Faim) were able to sift through the information on projects funded by the French government and to publish the main outputs of their analyses in their report “Une pincée d´agroécologie pour une louche d’agro-industrie”.

The results are enlightening: only 13.3% of total French public financing contributed to “transformative” agroecology, acting both on agricultural practices and on food systems (modification of land rights, protection of natural resources, etc.). In addition, 9.3% of the financing supported projects related to “greening” of agricultural practices, but without systemic ambition.

In contrast, 23.6% of the total public funding supported “non-agroecological” projects (which focused on increasing yields regardless of the agricultural model implemented, on the development of industrial agriculture, etc.), frequently in partnership with large French private groups having business ambitions in the countries concerned.

As a result, the marking of funding in favour of the ecological and social transition of agriculture appears still largely insufficient in comparison with the commitments of the French government, and the contradictions between its various public policies remain to be resolved.

 

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