China

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.

Japanese food corporations are stepping up their diversification and security of food sources, in particular taking ownership of the entire supply chain, from owning the farms in other countries, through to the processing and distribution of the food stuffs.

China is looking at the Philippines to meet its domestic food and energy requirements even as the Chinese economy is being restructured into an enormous assembly hub of manufactured goods for the American, Japanese and European markets.

"In a wide-ranging conversation, Sudanese business magnate Osama Daoud outlined a project to gradually develop as much as 1.26 million acres in northern Sudan for agricultural production," reports the US Embassy in Khartoum

Chinese investment in Africa is expanding beyond a race to secure minerals and energy sources to put an increasing focus on agriculture, the chief executive of Standard Chartered Bank said on Wednesday.

Un mariage d’intérêt pourrait naître de l’excédent de liquidités dans les pays du Golfe et de l’abondance de terres arables en Afrique. C’est le vœu de Gulf Finance, Al Ihmar et Abu Dhabi Investment House, trois mousquetaires de la finance islamique qui viennent de mettre en place, fin août, un fonds d’investissement agricole appelé Agricapital.

An expected call from Goldman Sachs could change 59-year-old pig farmer, Zou Changkui's (who resides in the southern Chinese city of Longyan) life forever.

"Initially we asked the Africans how much they wanted in rent. They said it's free, just share the food with us. We made a deal that we only pay $1 per year per acre in rent. At the start we didn't promote the idea because we didn't want people to say we were grabbing land."

L'Etat cède 880000 hectares de terre arable pour 670 millions d'euros. Publiée mi-août par le Financial Times, l'annonce du gouvernement soudanais n'est plus vraiment une nouveauté. Comme d'autres avant lui, le pays est prêt à céder un territoire presque aussi grand que l'Ile-de-France à des investisseurs étrangers trop contents de s'exécuter.

Quelque 95 tonnes de graines de sésame transportées par un avion charter sont arrivées samedi à l'aéroport Léopold Sédar Senghor de Dakar pour les besoins d'un projet de partenariat entre un investisseur privé chinois et l'Etat du Sénégal

Corporate ownership of world food sources may be shifting into high gear. Goldman Sachs, the private equity investment bank of the ultra wealthy and powerful, has announced that it's in the race to scoop up assets related to food production.

Japan's big trading houses, which have enjoyed bumper years from betting on iron ore and metals, are getting into the food market, aiming to tap voracious demand in China and emerging economies.