Civil society, including African farmers unions, need to educate local people that such land deals are not in their interests, however couched in 'win-win' terminology they appear to be.
Unctad’s World Investment Report is the first detailed analysis of FDI flows behind the so-called farmland grab trend, in which countries such as Saudi Arabia or South Korea invest in overseas plots.
Contract between the government of Cameroon and SGSOC granting the company control over 73,000 ha in Cameroon for 99 years, for the production of plam oil. SGSOC is a subsidiary of Herakles Farms, owned by US venture capital firm HeraklesCapital.
Last May, while Pakistan’s military was waging its offensive in Swat, Islamabad officials were simultaneously launching another offensive in the Gulf: a charm offensive to secure investment in Pakistani farmland.
It is unfortunate that even as deals that involve land which should belong to the people of Pakistan are struck, there has been so little public debate about the plan. We need to be informed of what is planned. Protests need too to be mobilized. In the prevailing political environment of Pakistan, the people who stand to lose the most have almost no spokesmen.
Growing demand for farm output is driving African agriculture and the sector could lead the continent's push for investment, an agribusiness manager for South Africa's Absa bank said on Thursday.
COPAGEN strongly recommends peasant organisations along with other sectors of the population to mobilise and to challenge the land grab transactions already made and, from the standpoint of food sovereignty, to discuss how to safeguard this land that is their heritage.
Provisional authorization for land exploitation (1 000 ha) in the Gaza province and Terms of authorization of project "Emvest Limpopo Project (Matuba Farm)"
Land owners at Koya Chiefdom together with chiefdom elders and officials of Quifel have signed a 50 years land lease agreement for agricultural purposes.
The government should enhance rural funding and at the same time curtail federal non-development expenditures in order to avoid leasing country’s land to foreign investors.
The Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA), in a unanimously adopted resolution on Tuesday, demanded the government immediately withdraw leasing of agricultural land to other countries.
The Lahore High Court Bar Association stated that farmlands were being acquired by the Arabs as front men for the Americans who would eventually use them for possible military bases, because Arabs had been front men in the bid to purchase Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) for an Indian businessman.
