US government mission in Riyadh writes, "Although the idea of Saudi farms in Africa may sound farfetched, the Kingdom has for years hired foreign managers and laborers to administer its farms and other agribusinesses (e.g., most Saudi wheat farms currently have Egyptian managers)."
A top-level Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP) delegation, led by QNFSP chairman Fahd al Attiyah, will visit agricultural research institutes and meet senior US Government officials, including from the White House, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy during its week-long US programme.
A foreign company intends to clear 10 000 hectares of land in the Bwabwata National Park in northern Namibia in order to set up a large-scale irrigation scheme for crop farming
The government is working to attract local and foreign investors to finance the Jordanian agricultural mega-project in Sudan, said a senior official. "One international company has shown interest in taking part in the project so far," the minister told The Jordan Times
Peter Costello, the former treasurer of Australia, revealed Wednesday he was working with an investment fund that planned to inject US$600 million into Cambodia’s agricultural sector. The projects will cover a vast area, about 100,000 hectares.
The fund is in the process of leasing 50,000 hectares of land in Tanzania which will be complete by the end of this year and will mainly be for rice production.
Both private and public sector investors from countries such as Qatar, Libya, Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the Arab world as well as China and Korea elsewhere now hold long term rights to a total of two million feddans of arable land in Sudan, according to figures from the country’s agriculture ministry.
The Lumix AgroDirect Fund, which has been incubated since June 2008, invests in the production of soft commodities and in commodity trade finance in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
This three years memorandum is not only setting a framework of cooperation but it includes some specific steps such as mutual beneficial arrangements in the agricultural sector (e.g. investment and provision of grain, development of a grain terminal)
The media and environmentalists must intensify their focus on the environmental costs of international farmland transactions.
Indonesia's Vice Agriculture Minister Bayu Krishnamurti said, “They are ready to invest, to build farms, factories and industries.”
The Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors said that Saudi businesspeople were keen to invest in Turkey, particularly in agriculture. “The Kingdom has a huge program involving billions of riyals for agricultural investment in countries with fertile soil and plentiful water.”
