Dan Iles, from Global Justice Now, gave a first hand account of his visit to Tanzania, to an audience of over 20 at our meeting at RISC on May 4th. Powerful corporations are lining up to seize control over the country’s land, seeds and soil. However, passionate small-scale farmers are fighting back. Dan guided us through the main players in the struggle over Tanzania’s food system and discussed the wider context in Africa and around the world. His visit to organic farmers uncovered powerful groups, using inter-cropping, green manure, and natural plants, whose perfumes repelled insect and other pests, providing high yields of staple crops such as sorghum. A local system of agricultural advisers provided guidance on sustainable agricultural methods. In contrast, funded in part by the UK DfID Aid budget, was investment by large corporations, locking local farmers into contracts to use hybrid seeds, dependent on inorganic fertilisers, and synthetic herbicides, with mechanical harvesting. These farmers relied on The New Alliance programme to provide loans to buy these imports and to provide an external infrastructure to get crops to market. It is designed to entice the farmers into the cash economy, rather than providing local food, where they would use their earnings to buy food in place of growing it. However, their debt incurred by buying into the contracts, continues to increase, since they must buy new seeds, fertilisers and herbicides each and every year, from the corporations. The government has facilitated land purchase at low prices, displacing the locals from land they have owned and used for years. It was a controversial meeting with often lively contributions.