Empirical Analysis on Local Farmers Perceptions towards Overseas Farmland Investments in Ethiopia

Abstract

In the past few decades there has been growing interest among multinational companies towards investment in overseas farmland. The whole process and result of such investments has become a hot topic of debate among scholars, media experts, social activists, and policy practitioners. The huge wave of overseas large scale farm land investment has generated conflicting views among scholars and developmental policy practitioners regarding its significance. Ethiopia has been in the spotlight in this regard as the government was avowed to attract investment in farmland and, in return, many foreign companies flocked to acquire large tracts of farmland, often dispossessing the local community. In this study we investigate the perceptions of local framers on overseas farmland investments in Ethiopia using a cross sectional survey data. We applied descriptive and inferential statistical analysis using SPSS. The findings indicate that out of the 440 participants covered by the survey 53.6 percent of the respondents were not happy with the activity of the investors’ in their local area. The correlation results indicate that there is significant positive relationship between the age, family Size, and off farm employment of the respondents with that of their perception, whereas there is negative correlation between migration statuses, educational level and farm land size with that of their satisfaction level. Finally the logistic result indicates perception of local farmers has significant relationship with age (0.001) and of farm employment of the respondents (0.0000) with P value less than 1 percent. Besides Migration status (.036), family size (.044), educational level (.004), income level (.044) and farm land size (.046) has significant association with the perception of the participants with P value of less than 5 and 10 percent, whereas sex (.537) and marital status (.843) of the respondents have no significant relationship with their perception.