Jeffrey Notaro, a trader who worked on Wall Street for 18 years, set up investment fund Black Sea Agriculture seven years ago, mainly for investments in farmland in northern Bulgaria and south Romania.
The U.S. should reassess its support for the government of Ethiopia, amid concern that more than half a million people are being evicted to make land available for foreign investment in agriculture, advocacy groups say.
Given the need for investment in African agriculture, there is no reason that foreign farmland investment on the continent cannot be structured as a win-win for both private investors and the host country populations.
Obama announces G8's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and reiterates support for the "process and pilot use of the Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment"
New paper on the gender dimensions of land grabbing in Africa
The Financial Times reported this week that TIAA-CREF is developing a new “investment vehicle” that will bet the retirement funds of millions of American on the rising price of farmland around the world.
Four African leaders attending the rich nations’ meeting that opens in Washington today have been cautioned to be wary of the G8’s New Alliance to Increase Food and Nutrition Security, noting that it poses a serious threat to small-scale farmers in Africa.
Indigenous Papuans are reeling from the cut-price sale of the land and forests that are their lifeblood
Authorities say the land is owned by the government, but the activists claim the previously state-owned land already has been awarded to a Russian company to be developed as a plantation.
Ethiopia's State Minister of Industry, Tadesse Hailem, says the investors have expressed interest to invest in the agriculture sector in Ethiopia and export it to their country.
"Investing in Farmland and Feeding the World," was discussed at an interactive session at the 65th CFA Institute Annual Conference in Chicago last week.
On the ground reports have exposed a secret operation by Ethiopian forces to force the Suri, Bodi and Mursi tribes out of their ancestral land to pave way for sugarcane plantations of Malaysian investors.
