Egypt

“Buying farms is not a bad thing,” Panos Konandreas, acting director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Geneva, said in a telephone interview. “If you are like Saudi Arabia and have all the resources in the world, you can help farms optimize their strategies and there will be more production.”

UAE wants to boost investment in Egypt’s agricultural sector in the light of the current rise in prices of commodities worldwide.

The Moroccan government has pursued a strategy of leasing state-farms previously under the management of Société de Développement Agricole (SODEA). A large number of bids were made by agricultural businesses from France, Egypt, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.