India

Corporate pitch from Uruguay-based private equity firm Allied Venture for Indian investors to go into outsourced agriculture in Latin America

Allied Venture promo video for Indian investors

I wonder how many other behind-the-scenes transactions are currently underway in the continent that will only be announced when the deals have been signed and perhaps money has exchanged hands.

India, once the colonial jewel of Britain's empire, has been accused of 'neo-colonialism' in Africa where its business people have joined a race with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to buy up agricultural estates and take advantage of cheap labour.

I wonder why the people (and more importantly the political leaders and elite) of the African and Latin American countries are not opposing and driving these companies out from within their national borders. The reason is simple. The rich and elite of every country is the real beneficiary of the process of globalisation.

Greg Mason, from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, says countries and regions facing 'peak water' like China, India and the Arab states are looking to solve food shortages by growing crops in places like the Ukraine and Australia.

Indian firms have signed land deals in Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar to produce a range of food crops for export to India.

KS Oils acquires additional 14,000 HA land for oil palm plantations in Indonesia, owning a total of 34,000 ha.

Codes of conduct don’t work, said Devinder Sharma of Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, Delhi. “It is unethical to grab land in other countries; it will lead to food crisis as investor countries will grow food for profit.”

Yes Bank expects a $150 million Tanzanian rice and wheat project to reach full production by 2011, the first of several large African farms it is funding. "We are looking at a more inclusive model wherein the local farmers can be organised into a producers company, and they would be the suppliers to the processing facility. It's predominantly not to acquire huge tracts of land."

A multi-million birr investment project by Karuturi Global Limited, an Indian company in Etang Special Woreda of Gambella State was launched on Saturday.

Capitalists of the world are cornering land in emerging markets. India need not wait until international agencies start lecturing us on the need for “reforms” (and FDI) in agriculture.