A group of Saudi-based investors announced earlier this monthy a seven-year plan to develop and plant 700,000 hectares to produce 7 million tonnes of rice in countries like Uganda.
Resource-hungry China has so far passed over investing in high-priced farmlands of South America in favor of Africa, with its less developed commodities markets, greater need for financing and open labor laws.
Suicide is becoming a common reality in Barreirinhas, as families are talked into “renting” their land to the sugar cane companies.
Ethiopia is on the defensive over a plan to offer 2.7 million hectares of land to foreign, mainly Asian, companies despite millions crying out for food aid from the international community.
A private agricultural investment firm in Abu Dhabi plans a Dh925 million (US$251.8m) farmland deal in Egypt to grow wheat for the African nation’s domestic market.
If the moratorium on agricultural land sale is lifted, rich multinational corporations will buy and it will be legislatively impossible to strip them of lands that could be used for feeding Ukrainians.
Ethiopian government has defended its plan to offer 2.7 million hectares of farmland to foreign companies despite millions of citizens who need food aid from the international community.
The terms of farmland deals are hardly made public. Although a theoretical possibility exists in a few cases for some transfer of technology for agricultural development, risk also exists to peasant farmers who cannot compete with well-resourced commercial farms. Take, for instance, the case of barley and oilseeds producers in Ethiopia.
The consensus is that Africa is being out-gunned. While regulations & rules are debated, the amount of land being bought up by foreign investors is increasing at a rapacious speed.
Yes, we should be concerned about the farmers' rapid loss of land. But aren't we pointing the finger in the wrong direction?
The Thai government has reiterated it will do everything in its power to keep the country's rice farming land out of the hands of foreign investors.
Gulf states buying farmland in developing nations for food security face the risk of damaging their reputation as international investors as the deals are seen as land grabs, a Rothschild executive said yesterday.
