Myanmar

Some of India's top vegetable oil firms plan to lease or buy land in Paraguay, Uruguay and Myanmar to grow oilseeds and lentils as farmland shrinks in the South Asian nation, a top trade official said yesterday.

Contributing their bit to the global Indian takeover, the government and India Inc plan to buy sizeable land abroad for cultivation. Seen as a long-term answer to keep prices of farm products under control, the grand plan envisages acquisition of large tracts of land in neighbouring countries like Myanmar and far off places like Paraguay.

A Kuwaiti delegation last week met with the Myanmar cabinet and industry officials to discuss investment in the agricultural sector.

In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, His Highness the Prime Minister od Kuwait’s visit was of great importance given the promising financial investment opportunities in those nations. One of the main topics discussed was food imports from these countries as a means for securing food supply, facilitating a Kuwaiti energy supply to them, as well as cooperation in oil exploration and the agricultural field.

As other countries have pushed their industrial bases thousands of miles offshore in search of resources and labor, China is doing the same thing with agriculture, expanding as far away as Africa in its effort to feed its people.

Bangladesh urged Myanmar on Thursday to lease it farm land near the border for rice cultivation to meet its growing food demand, an official said.

As Beijing scrambles to feed its galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese enterprises are snapping up vast tracts of land abroad and forging contract farming deals.

A military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.