Democratic Republic of Congo, the third largest country in the world, almost the size of Western Europe is grasping after the noose of poverty and hunger has strangled its economic throat. Gaining its independence in 1960, DRC has been put into frying pan from fire.It has since then been witnessing ethnical riots and pseudo-colonial aggression from countries like USA and EU who have been vying desperately to grab the natural resources of the country which is the largest exporter of cobalt and fourth largest exporter of diamond, DRC has suffered from ethnic scuffle. Carrying a huge resource for bio-fuel, Congo is also carter of an odd 56% mal-nourished people and 70% of people suffering from hunger, Congo is baffled how to use the natural resources at its disposal.
According to UN reports by economist Dr. Schmidhuber, there are 85- 115 millions of hectares of land of which only four millions can be irrigated. Yet after having such land resources which can cultivate food for 2-3 billion of people, the country has to import food from European Union. The blatant reason lies in the fact that only 5% of land in Congo is cultivable.
So, if DRC has such potentiality, doled out by Nature, for its people why it is so lowly placed? The greedy Goliaths of the world are eyeing DRC as their prime prey. Of these economic giants, China has successfully forayed into territory of bio-fuel resources in DRC. According to a report by John Farmer and Ann Talbot China has established itself in Congo by providing US$ 8 billion dollars for infrastructure projects and mining operations. This will give China control over several important copper and cobalt mines. This is just the beginning with mines. Still Congo has eerie 85- 115 hectares of land left and tropical forests. These forests can be planned to be used for palm plantation to meet the spiralling need for agro fuel for European and US cars as well as China’s demand for palm oil.
UN economist Dr. Schmidhuber says that Congo can use the maverick expanse of land for cultivation of palm oil. He says that the palm oil can help the poor farmers in Congo who live earning less than half US$ per day to produce their own fuel and limit food production. But there is a possibility that it might lead to ecological imbalance. If palm oil plantation wrack those people who are dependent on the forests for their livelihood, it is certain that it will disturb equilibrium between economy and ecology. Palm oil plantation will be possible when the forest will be accessed. This means forest will be logged, timber will be sold and revenue will result.
Already a Chinese company has signed a billion-dollar contract to start cultivation of palm oil in 3 million hectare of land which means a huge loss of forestry. Congo’s fuel price problem has reached nadir point resulting in hunger problem. Dr. Schimidhuber stresses too much on the cultivation of fuel crop. But if fuel crop is cultivated at the cost of food crop how the productive land will help to eradicate hunger, one of the burning problems of the country? If most of the farm land is used for cultivating palm oil, 145,000 small-scale farmers will finally migrate to cities which will aggravate the agro-based problems.