Arab Grain Imports Rising Rapidly
- 02 May 2012
The Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa make up nearly 5 percent of the world's population, yet take in more than 20 percent of the world's grain exports.
The Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa make up nearly 5 percent of the world's population, yet take in more than 20 percent of the world's grain exports.
A global food crisis and rapid population growth are making farmland an increasingly attractive investment. Holly Black looks at the options.
Attracted by the low cost of agricultural land, Farmers from elsewhere in the EU are taking the plunge to set up in Romania.
Dalla Al Baraka, a Saudi conglomerate with $5 billion in annual revenue, has acquired two million acres of farmland in eastern Sudan to produce food for export to the Middle Eastern kingdom. While the investors are hoping to wean Saudi Arabia off imports from South America, such agreements cause concern among local Sudanese farmers.
Last week, the Land Matrix "land grab" database was released. On paper, they have a strong methodology and strict criteria about projects to be included. In practice, they seem to violate their own rules, at least when it comes to Chinese "projects" in Africa.
A Chinese investment group has reportedly lodged a bid to buy the entire 15,000 hectares of the Ord Expansion Project in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The price for Alliance’s investigations into cases of land grabbing has been set so high that once paid it will become extremely risky for anyone to question the vices of land grabbing and forceful evictions of innocent citizens.
Liberal MP backs calls from farming groups nationwide to tighten government regulations that scrutinise potential sales of Australian farmland and water assets to foreign investors and increase transparency.
Indigenous people fear collective retaliation by government security forces.
Discussions with EU officials covered various aspects of human rights violations in Ethiopia with a focus on the large-scale land-lease to local and international commercial farmers, the evictions of Oromo farmers from their homes and farmlands, and the situation of Oromo refugees in the Horn of Africa and Yemen.
Investment managers meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York said rising US farmland prices were making it harder to find quality land and high returns, and a lot of capital flow is moving to developing nations.
Gunmen attacked the camp of an agricultural company owned by a Saudi billionaire in southwest Ethiopia, Federal Affairs Minister Shiferaw Teklemariam said.