Korea

"They [Daewoo] have prospected for land and now the central government is waiting for the prospecting reports,” the Malagasy land reform ministry told the FT. Critics said the welfare of Malagasy people and global food security would be better served by islanders being helped to manage their own farms. They stressed the trickle-down effect of Daewoo’s plan would be marginal and noted the company’s focus on exporting food from a country in which about 600,000 people rely on relief from the United Nations World Food Programme.

Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.

Sauf secret bien gardé, c’est à ce jour la plus importante transaction du genre : la Corée du Sud vient de révéler qu’elle va louer 1,3 million d’hectares de terre à ­l’État malgache.

Dernières nouvelles de la mondialisation : la société sud-coréenne Daewoo Logistics négocie avec le gouvernement de Madagascar la location, pour quatre-vingt-dix-neuf ans, de quelque 1,3 million d'hectares de terres agricoles. Soit un quarante-cinquième de la superficie de l'île : comme si la France accordait pour un siècle à un investisseur étranger la libre disposition de deux de ses départements...

After a phone talk with one of my sources, I discovered that the branch office of Daewoo Logistics had nothing to do with it. Actually, the company which has dealt with this land matter was a Malagasy incorporated company: Madagascar Future Entreprise.

Video news clip on the Daewoo scheme in Madagascar

The food crisis this year generated unprecedented interest in Cambodian agricultural land, and governments are scrambling for access to the country's vast food-growing potential.

La Corée du Sud vient de louer la moitié des terres cultivables de Madagascar. Sur le continent noir, ce type de transaction se multiplie.

Colombian indigenous took their protest to Colombia’s capital Bogotá this weekend. Their struggle is about controlling the land in which they have lived and taken care of for hundreds of years, the latest culprits being irregular armed groups controlled by the traditional landowners and foreign companies (Chiquita Brands being the best example).

Afin d'accroître leur production agricole, certains pays occidentaux tentent de mettre la main sur des millions d'hectares au détriment des petits fermiers et des producteurs locaux.

La Corée du Sud vient de louer la moitié des terres arables de Madagascar, selon le Financial Times. Ceci provoque un vigoureux débat dans la blogosphère malgache sur la souveraineté des Malgaches sur leurs terres et sur le développement économique.

South Korea has just leased half of all the arable land in Madagascar according to the Financial Times. This has stirred quite a debate in the Malagasy blogosphere about land sovereignty and economic development.