NZ wide open to massive land grab
- Voxy
- 18 December 2009
New Zealand needs to tighten its rules around overseas investment as China and the Gulf States go on a world-wide shopping spree for prime land, said Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman.
New Zealand needs to tighten its rules around overseas investment as China and the Gulf States go on a world-wide shopping spree for prime land, said Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman.
"I think it is not right to sell or give your land to foreigners... until you have exhausted every local possibility," said Osama Daoud, chief executive of the Sudanese DAL group which runs large agricultural projects.
Inversores árabes y asiáticos buscan tomar el control de amplias extensiones de tierras fértiles en Sudán, el país más grande de África, que quiere convertirse en el granero de Oriente Medio, aunque para ello deberá modernizar primero su agricultura.
"Al Shariqi said that while the government does not have foreign agricultural investments, some UAE sheikhs personally own land in Pakistan, Egypt, Australia and New Zealand," reports the US mission in Abu Dhabi
At a two-day conference near the Moroccan capital Rabat, local officials sought to convince Gulf investors that heavy bureaucracy and complex land ownership rules, long seen as decisive obstacles, are a thing of the past.
Foreign companies are covertly buying up adjacent farms in Australia to use as a "salad bowl" in the case of global food shortages.
An Abu Dhabi-based private sector investment firm has signed a contract to lease up to 700,000 hectares of farmland in Morocco, a company executive said yesterday.
"Already we have received a lot of interest from the UAE to invest in Ukraine's agriculture sector, and we are offering all kinds of projects such as leasing of 100,000 hectares of land to the creation of animal farms with 3000 cows," Ukraine's agriculture minister said.
Why produce a low-value crop such as wheat using expensive water when the FAO says the global wheat harvest will this year be second only to last year’s record?
As the issue of global food security was being discussed yesterday in Rome by world leaders, a senior UN official here highlighted the need for GCC countries to address their dependence on food imports.
Four months ago I travelled to the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines to research agriculture's new land grab phenomenon as part of my postgraduate research. I expected my findings to be a blend of arguments from both sides of the debate. However, I concluded that there was a strong case to be made against the proposition of a "win-win" situation for every stakeholder.
A private sector fund worth $350 million plans to launch by the end of the year in the Gulf, with the aim of acquiring farmland in Romania, Moldova and Tanzania
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