With more savvy investors buying up farmland, land prices have doubled within five years and the result is mega-farms like KTG Agra, which owns 50,000 ha in eastern Germany, Lithuania and Romania.
According to the office of German parliament member, the conflict in Ukraine is used to cover up a sale of farmlands in the interest of major corporations.
Germany’s largest meat producer Clemens Toennies will finalise a deal for a pig farm with 1,500,000 animal units on 15,000 hectares of land in Serbia.
German airline Lufthansa in talks with several investment firms about taking on management of a private equity fund that will invest into farmland in Cameroon and Eastern Europe to grow oil crops.
Some 4,000 hectares of farmland in Lithuania sold to a German institutional investor and leased back for 18 years.
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NGOs in Germany accuse the public development agency DEG of promoting land grabbing in developing and newly industrialised countries and blames the German government for not taking the issue seriously.
Land prices in eastern Germany are rising at dizzying rates and local farmers feel they are being squeezed out by foreign investors in a phenomenon known as "land grabbing".
Les grandes exploitations agricoles de ex-RDA héritées du communisme attisent la convoitise d'investisseurs et les prix flambent dans cette partie de l'Allemagne où la grogne monte contre le "landgrabbing".
On January 22 a comprehensive database on land and resource governance programmes funded by members of the Global Donor Working Group on Land will be presented during the AGA in Paris.
Amatheon, a company part owned by the German holding company Sapinda, grows wheat and soya beans on 30,000 ha that it has leased in Zambia.
This year could see a surge in interest in farmland from investors with very little experience in this complicated asset class, reports Euromoney
Young farmers in eastern Germany are scrambling to find land as they compete with large multinationals.
