Karuturi Global Ltd

"We are using knowledge and resources from Latin America and North America, capital from this part of the world (India) and land from Africa to make hopefully a heady cocktail,"says Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi

Interest by both local and international companies to lease land has been met with criticism by some outside the region, yet locals are unperturbed.

“We have finalised deals with four big agro companies in India for joint ventures for different crops that we are looking at growing – rice, maize, oil palm and sugarcane,” says Karuturi.

The 19th century had the Great Scramble for Africa, when developed nations raced for several decades to lay claim to new territories and their riches. This century may yet be known as the Great Selloff of Africa.

Minutes from the Karuturi Global Limited Q2 FY2012 results conference call.

Karuturi Agro Products Plc has refuted reports that the company subleased farm land to Indian farmers, claiming instead that the Indian farmers were hired solely for consultancy services.

For Gambellans who live as pastoralist and subsistence farmers, massive dispossession and auctioning off their land for pennies will inevitably destroy the very fabric of their society and way of life and threaten them with extinction.

Karuturi Global is looking at outsourcing 20,000 hectares of farm land in the African nation to Indian farmers on a revenue-sharing basis.

Obtaining millions of hectares for farming in Africa, Indian firms are playing predator.

Karuturi Global Ltd. is to construct embankments around 25,000ha of farmland, half the size of Addis Abeba, in Gambela, at a cost of US$15 million, following its report of a loss of US$15 million due to flooding.

The flooding that breached specially built barriers near Karuturi’s plantations couldn’t have been predicted, Karuturi claims.

Karuturi in a statement said the floods had affected its maize crop in over 12,000 hectares of land that has been leased to them.