The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources and the General Authority for Lands signed on Wednesday an agreement to allocate and hand over 26,000 hectares of state-owned land in Al-Tuhayta District, Hodeidah Governorate, for the establishment of the First Agricultural and Investment Zone.
Little of the 5 million acres [2.02 million hectares] that Sudan's agriculture ministry estimates are in foreign hands—perhaps less than 1 in 20 acres—has been cultivated.
The member countries also agreed to draft a unified strategy for cooperation with other Arab countries that have agricultural land, including Sudan, Morocco and Yemen, as well as with African countries.
Numero 10/11 de 'Transcontinentales' sur les logiques transnationales d'appropriation foncière.
Yemen, grappling with poverty and a resurgent al Qaeda, is in talks with Saudi firms interested in acquiring farms or investing in fishery and livestock production with a first deal eyed by June.
"Finance Minister Yousef Hussein Kamal said he had personally been traveling to Vietnam, Cambodia, Yemen, Sudan, Tajikistan, and elsewhere to look into investing in agricultural production for the Qatari market," reports the US Embassy in Doha about a visit from US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
The UAE and other Gulf oil producers are considering creating a giant fund to invest in farm in fertile Arab areas and other nations to slash a soaring import bill and ease reliance on foreign markets for their food.
As food crisis worsens, some nations are desperate for arable land
Gulf oil producers need to set up agricultural projects in fertile Arab countries to achieve self-sufficiency and to bridge a massive farm deficit that exceeded $12 billion (Dh44bn) in 2006, a Gulf group said yesterday.
