UAE

Sudan and UAE have agreed to concentrate investment in the field of agriculture, referring that the UAE Al-Thahra Company expressed desire to invest in Sudan as strategic partner in the food security projects.

Chinese and other eastern investors are looking to buy agriculture land and agribusiness across the globe, and Ukraine is increasingly on their radar.

Four months before South Sudan becomes an independant nation nine percent of the country has been targeted by investors, a Norwegian People's Aid report reveals.

The UAE and other Gulf states in collaboration with Singapore companies are entering the Chinese agriculture market to ensure food security.

Gulf states are following in the footsteps of China and looking beyond their shores to make heavy investments in agriculture

The company is currently looking at concluding another deal in Africa as well as other opportunities on behalf of regional investors for large scale production of crops in areas such as Africa, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Local food companies are not financially capable of investing in farmlands abroad to grow basic staples that would insulate them from soaring prices of raw materials, they said on the sidelines of Gulfood 2011.

Dubai business leaders have urged the Government to snap up farmland overseas to grow basic staples as a buffer against soaring food prices.

The UAE will look to invest in farmland in Turkey as rising prices raise the urgency of food security, says Sultan al Mansouri, the Minister of Economy.

Former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, is leading a push to get Arabs to invest in Australian farmland as part of a long term food security strategy for oil-rich Gulf States

The UAE and other GCC member countries should draw up a unified food security strategy with the bloc, and not individual countries, investing in farms abroad to minimise risks of political blackmail.

A handful of North African countries, along with Iraq and Sudan, could feed the Gulf.