Congo

South African farmers have been offered 10 million hectares of farm land on which to grow maize and soya beans and on which to set up poultry and dairy farms in the Republic of Congo, South Africa’s main farmers union said yesterday.

L’accord pourrait être un des plus importants contrats fonciers d’Afrique à ce jour. Dix millions d’hectares de terres agricoles sont proposées par la République du Congo à des agriculteurs sud-africains pour y cultiver du maïs et du soja et y élever de la volaille et des vaches laitières, a annoncé hier Theo De Jager, vice-président d’Agriculture South Africa (AgriSA).

Congo-Brazzaville offers free irrigation land to South African farmers exclusively for 99 years. Six government farms of 135 000ha in the Niarri Valley and another 10?million hectares have also been made available.

Some Laotian farmers are losing their ancestral lands or being forced to become wage workers on what were once their fields

One would expect China to add food crops, or farm land, into its growing number of arrangements with African nations, which could explain part of China’s support for Robert Mugabe in that potential breadbasket, Zimbabwe (one report states that China has already received rights to farm 250,000 acres, or 1,000 square kilometres, of corn in southern Zimbabwe).

As Beijing scrambles to feed its galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese enterprises are snapping up vast tracts of land abroad and forging contract farming deals.