Tenant farming was popular in rural America until the Dust Bowl years of the Depression, but the practice is making a comeback on an epic scale in much of Africa.

Saudi Arabia is in a better position to forge politico-economic partnerships with other countries with a view to achieving food security. The best partner in this respect is Sudan, known as the food basket of the Arab world. But foreigners are reluctant to invest in Sudan and the efforts made by the Sudanese government to overcome this reluctance have not met with much success.

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

"There is not yet any discussion about the fee because it will depend on the contract later, therefore the information released that DWL acquired a land for free is incorrect."

The South Korean company Daewoo Logistics wants to use 1 million hectares in Madagascar to grown maize. The company also wants to plant palm oil on the island.

Madagascar has denied reaching agreement with South Korea's Daewoo Logistics to let it plant more than 1 million hectares of food crops on the Indian Ocean island.

Madagascar officials are enthusiastic about a company's big farming plans for an undeveloped area but say the deal won't go ahead if it threatens the island's unique ecology. An environmental impact assessment was to begin shortly, the Malagasy Environment Office said Thursday.

Cambodia is in talks with several Asian and Middle Eastern governments to receive as much as $3bn in agricultural investment in return for millions of hectares in land concessions, according to a senior government official.

A lot of countries don't grow nearly enough food to feed themselves. Britain is one; South Korea, another. The giant South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, has come up with a novel way of solving the problem of food security. It has leased a vast tract of land, 1.3 million acres, on the African island of Madagascar.

The initial welcome given to rich countries’ investment in African farmland by agricultural and development officials has faded as the first ventures prove to be heavily weighted in favour of the investors. The FAO warned of such a trend when it said this year that the race to secure farmland overseas risked creating a “neo-colonial” system.

Daewoo Logistics Corp., a South Korean natural-resource development company, expects a project to lease vast tracts of farmland in Madagascar to grow corn and palm oil may cost about $6 billion over the first 20 years. The investment will pay for the lease costs as well as building a port, roads, irrigation, and power plants, along with schools and hospitals for locals, Shin Dong Hyun, a manager leading the project, said today by phone.

Pirates are not the only source of concern off the African coast. The deal South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics is negotiating with the Madagascan government looks rapacious. Alas, it is but the latest brazen example of a wider phenomenon.