Mozambique farmland is prize in land grab fever
- NPR
- 14 June 2012
NPR takes a closer look at the reality behind the rhetoric, and went to Mozambique, a hot spot in the global rush for land.
NPR takes a closer look at the reality behind the rhetoric, and went to Mozambique, a hot spot in the global rush for land.
A policy paper will next week be presented to the annual World Bank conference on land and poverty in Washington DC in the United States, which focuses on the confrontation between peasant producers and investors in the Mozambican province of Zambezia.
The six case studies compiled in this report illustrate the wide range of approaches and focus that private funds are adopting (legal structure, geography, agricultural production and operating strategies) to invest in farmland in different parts of the world.
African farmland investment has the potential to match the exponential growth of Brazil's agricultural industry, the head of business development at privately owned agricultural operator Quifel said.
Angola, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, has launched an ambitious plan to exploit both its fertile soils and high global food prices to attract $6bn (€4.3bn, £3.4bn) in agriculture investments over the next five years.