Food security: We need a strategy for rice
- Jakarta Post
- 17 June 2009
Singapore's Temasek is seeking to buy land in North Bolaang Mongondow, North Sulawesi, where they plan to grow high-quality rice.
Singapore's Temasek is seeking to buy land in North Bolaang Mongondow, North Sulawesi, where they plan to grow high-quality rice.
CNN's John Defterios takes a look at how Middle Eastern countries are scouring the globe for farmland.
En janvier, le premier riz “saoudien” produit à l’étranger a été présenté au roi Abdallah. Le consommateur saoudien ne goûte pas la différence. En dépit du renversement de conjoncture, il continue à payer son alimentation à un prix élevé, correspondant au niveau en vigueur pour les achats massifs effectués en 2008 afin de prévenir toute crise alimentaire.
Not a day goes by without new acreage being signed over. "For Sale" ads for agricultural property are now featured in the international financial press. And there's no dearth of clients.
"Je crois que les tensions seront inévitables où que ce soit, faisant des enclaves agricoles étrangères de véritables forteresses assiégées."
An agricultural investment firm owned by the Saudi government will focus on investing abroad to cultivate mainly wheat, rice, sugar and soybeans, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Monday.
South Korea, Asia’s second-biggest grain importer, will lend money and give technology to companies to develop farms overseas to ensure the nation’s food security after prices surged last year.
Saudi investors launched agricultural projects in Indonesia worth $1.3 billion last year, a top business official said on Monday, as the world's top oil exporter seeks to secure food supplies from abroad.
Indonesia will allocate at least 2 million hectares of farm land to joint ventures with Saudi investors to be used mainly for the cultivation of rice, a Saudi newspaper reported on Saturday.
Growing crops for strangers, of course, is nothing new. The long, grim march of colonialism was driven by Europe’s penchant for sugar, tea, tobacco and other crops that don’t flourish in northern climes. But as climate change and growing populations put ever more pressure on the earth, state-backed searches for land and food contracts as part of a national food-security strategy strike many as fundamentally new.
The United Arab Emirates plans to invest up to 700 billion US dollars in East Asia as the country had huge profits from soaring oil prices in recent years, Head of the Indonesian Capital Investment Coordinating Board Muhammad Lutfi said in Jakarta Thursday. Among the sectors for possible investment are energy, agriculture, tourism and food security.
The Saudi Binladin empire has frozen its plan to invest $4.3 billion in developing rice crops in Merauke in Papua Province and a separate project in Southeast Sulawesi Province.