Some fear that the land grabs could worsen poverty because few benefits will flow to the poorer host countries, and small farmers could lose out. Although the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is drawing up guidelines to protect their interests, it is far from clear whether anyone will follow them.
Faced with high land values and falling milk prices at home, a growing number of New Zealand dairy farmers are investing in South America, the United States, eastern Europe and Russia.
"They [Daewoo] have prospected for land and now the central government is waiting for the prospecting reports,” the Malagasy land reform ministry told the FT. Critics said the welfare of Malagasy people and global food security would be better served by islanders being helped to manage their own farms. They stressed the trickle-down effect of Daewoo’s plan would be marginal and noted the company’s focus on exporting food from a country in which about 600,000 people rely on relief from the United Nations World Food Programme.
Saudi billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi is finalizing plans for a $300 million sugar plantation in northwestern Ethiopia, the Walta Information Center reported.
Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.
The Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, returned from a visit to Qatar on Monday. His spokesman said the request for land in the Tana River delta, south of Lamu, was being seriously considered. “Nothing comes for free. If you want people to invest in your country then you have to make concessions,” the spokesman said.
Africa could be the breadbasket for the GCC, providing valuable water and food supplies to the entire region, a Bahraini expert claimed yesterday.
Qatar has asked Kenya to lease it 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops as part of a proposed package that would also see the Gulf state fund a new £2.4bn port on the popular tourist island of Lamu off the east African country.
Investment opportunities between Africa and the GCC are ripe for the picking, says a top government official.
Backed by their governments and bankrolled with huge trade and investment profits and budget surpluses, the newly emerging neo-colonial economic powers are seizing control of vast tracts of fertile lands from poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through the intermediation of local corrupt, free-market regimes.
The stalled Jordanian agricultural megaproject in Sudan is expected to be resumed at the beginning of 2009
We had a meeting today on alternative investment vehicles and discussed hard assets. One of the topics was farmland. There’s lots of movement in this space. South Korea just leased more than 1 million hectares in Madagascar for 99 years. Abu Dhabi has publicly announced intent to invest in around 500,000 hectares. This could be an agrarian ace in the hand for the Philippines.
