Powered by a $34.45-million infusion from a Singapore-based hedge fund owned by Cargill Inc., the expansion and acquisition binge of AgriNurture Inc. has accelerated into a buildup of farm hectarage that will see the company buy up some 1,400 hectares.
The companies, which produce mainly soya, sugarcane, corn and cotton, were informed about the opportunities for investment in the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT).
The ongoing rush to African land by national and transnational investors was a dominant theme at the People’s Dialogue and Summit being held at Mumemo in Maputo.
Politicians and economists say that the Australian public is only worked up about foreign ownership of agricultural land because the community is misinformed. This drives the belief that a register of foreign land holdings will calm everyone's anxiety. Given that Queensland has had such a register for 20 years, and that disquiet about foreign ownership still resonates among Queenslanders, this means that something else is at play.
The recent increasing land acquisitions by transnational corporations (TNCs) is causing conflicts among farmers, pastoralists and other land users in Ghana, and have the potential of leading to the loss of arable land by smallholders, reveals a study.
Ounkeo pioneered talkback radio in Laos, giving his listeners a rare chance to voice their opinions on the airwaves, but discussion on the sensitive subject of corporate land grabs appears to have persuaded officials that enough was enough.
Paraguay Resist Social Forum recorded in its first day of debates, denounces against government attacks on journalists, public and alternative media and land grabbing by multinational corporations.
Adecoagro, which owns nearly 300,000 hectares of land in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, said it had sold its San Jose site for $1,212 per hectare, compared with a purchase price of $85 per hectare in 2002.
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
