“We need to be growing at the rate of 10,000 hectares a year to be economically viable, which is not happening,” says Sime Darby official. “Securing land has been a gruelling process.”
Social organisations are shocked and offended by a Wall Street Journal article written by the FAO Director General and EBRD President that calls on governments to embrace corporations as the main engine for global food production.
High temperatures have combined with the worst drought in half a century to wreak havoc on American farms and ranches. Some 80 percent of U.S. farm and pasture land experienced drought.
"In the agri-business value chain, there are various investment opportunities for institutional investors that go beyond the heavily criticised investment strategies of land grab and commodity speculation."
Rising populations and the development of biofuels are increasing demand for arable land all over the world, and Arrianna Marie Conerly Coleman says that small farmers are the first to suffer.
Investments in industrial scale agriculture must balanced by equitable flow of benefits to smallholder farmers
A group of smallholder farmers in Mali have turned to the courts to try to recover land they say they have lost to big private investors. The legal action comes as foreign investors are losing interest in Mali due to political instability and an armed rebellion in the north.
A Chinese company's controversial bid to buy 16 New Zealand dairy farms has stalled again after a mystery backer agreed to finance another legal appeal against the purchase.
The European Union will impose a limit on the use of crop-based biofuels over fears they are less climate-friendly than initially thought and compete with food production, draft EU legislation seen by Reuters showed.
Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops.
When a Chinese investor bought a farm outside this village a few years back, he was pleased enough to name it Golden Land. The soil was rich, the sunshine and rain bountiful. The land, deep in rural Russia, was also largely devoid of people. No more.
Land grabbing in Congo is speculative, CONAPAC advisor Etienne Bisimwa says, often based on the anticipated demand for jatropha, for biofuel. The profits, he says, are unlikely to be invested in rural areas.
