Britain is the world’s biggest centre for private land grabbers.
The Nevada US firm Farm Lands of Africa has, after two years, accelerated its development into an agricultural producer by buying a rice-to-eucalyptus group in the Republic of Guinea with a landbank of 220,000 hectares, an area nearly the size of Luxembourg.
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If there is an issue that is the pulse of popular discontent in Tanzania presently, then, it is land.
"Today, all patriotic Africans are weeping when they see how African governments are giving out African lands, dispossessing the African people of their ancestral land, for practically next to nothing, in the name of attracting foreign investors!", writes Abba Mahmood
The sharpest tensions in the countryside hinge on alleged land grabs, in which the government and private developers are forcing farmers to leave their property for little or no compensation.
Savills international farmland market report for 2012
Over the last two months, the price of corn has been climbing. On July 19th, it exceeded $8 per bushel for the first time, taking the world into a new food price terrain. With heat and drought still smothering the Corn Belt, we may well see more all-time highs in coming weeks as the extent of crop damage becomes clearer.
Joe Azelby, JP Morgan’s head of Global Real Assets, is seeing a structural shift in many institutional portfolios toward real assets, including farmland.
Ethiopia has provided more than 71,000 hectares to 12 Ethiopian and international investors in the previous financial year according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
BFS has a land bank of 220,000 hectares under a Protocol d’Accord from the government of the Republic of Guinea
Thailand's Department of Special Investigation chief Tarit Pengdith said his department had not found any instances of foreigners owning farms or growing rice via nominees. Farming is forbidden to foreigners under the Foreign Business Act.
African Development Bank (AfDB) country director, Freddie Kwesiga, said the co-operating partners look forward to specific interventions to ensure improved land tenure and equitable access to land by partnerships of small, medium and large-scale investors.
