8 April 2011
Matilde Ngoene is a farmer in Mozambique.
Her small farm used to provide enough food to support her twelve children and grandchildren.
She is now finding it impossible to survive because an industrial biofuel company seized the family’s land and farming implements to grow sugar cane.
“They took the land when it was already tilled…they haven’t paid us anything. We are dying of hunger and there is nothing that we have that is actually our own.”
The company have offered Matilde’s family no jobs or compensation – despite the fact that her family lost 34 goats to pesticide poisoning after they grazed near the plantation.
“What we want is to get our farms back, because that is what our livelihood is dependent on.”