Laos

Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor.

Over the past few years Laos has seen a surge of foreign investment in farms and plantations from neighboring countries keen to acquire rubber, sugar, and other agricultural commodities. Under this project, noncommercial details of land concession awards will be posted on a public website to improve transparency, while the commercial terms will be kept in a confidential database for monitoring compliance.

A number of Kuwaiti businesses have expressed an interest in investing in agriculture in Laos, according to a Lao company owner.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are worldwide leaders in buying farmland in third-party countries, followed by China and Japan, says the World Bank.

Some Laotian farmers are losing their ancestral lands or being forced to become wage workers on what were once their fields

Land acquisitions abroad are the only viable response, Mohammed Raouf, program manager of environment research at the Gulf Research Center, and others say.

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

Once committed largely to perceived safe-haven investments in the United States, Gulf nations are now looking to send their petrodollar surpluses towards a more exotic global destination: Southeast Asian farmland.

8Natural gas exporter Qatar and Vietnam have set up a US$1 billion fund to invest in sectors including agriculture. Sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority will provide 90% of the fund's equity, Gulf Times reported, citing Phung The Long, Vietnam's Ambassador to Doha. "We have exchange ideas about setting up an animal farm for breeding cattle and lambs," The Long said.

A Kuwaiti delegation last week met with the Myanmar cabinet and industry officials to discuss investment in the agricultural sector.

It is becoming harder for Koreans to buy grain, regardless of price. That is why the government is hurrying to cultivate overseas crops and to secure stable import sources.

Alarmed by exporting countries’ trade restrictions, importing countries have realised that their dependence on the international food market makes them vulnerable not only to an abrupt surge in prices but, more crucially, to an interruption in supplies.