UAE

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.

Gulf nations now are quietly scouring the globe for rich farmland to rent or buy outright.

This analysis looks at how the oil-rich Muslim economies could leverage their existing relationships with agriculture based Muslim economies (which have a wide productivity gap with the worlds net agriculture exporters) taking them to globally competitive levels; reaping for themselves high investment returns, securing their own food sources, and contributing to alleviation of the food crisis from other Muslim countries.

Vision3, an alliance of three major Gulf financial institutions, has signed a landmark deal with Turkey paving the way for nearly $9 billion investment in Turkey’s agricultural sector.

The fund, which will invest in commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, has dual-purpose - to ensure returns in the range of 15-20 per cent, while the investment helps to create jobs and give rural Africans the chance to help themselves out of poverty. Currently, cru has significant exposure to commercial agriculture in Malawi with over 2,500 hectares of land under its own control and another 4,000 hectares in outgrower schemes.

Some experts believe that the emphasis should be on overseas agricultural investments as well as a boost in trade relationships, due to the unavoidable handicaps to domestic agriculture.

Talks are on with investors from Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. 25,000 Punjab villages will be affected.

Margarito B. Teves, Finance Secretary of the Philippines, spoke to Gulf News about the potential for joint investment initiatives between the UAE and the Philippines. "The UAE can count on the Philippines as a reliable supplier of food products permissible under Sharia."

Soaring food prices, supply fears among import-dependent countries and rising demand for biofuels have driven up investment in agricultural land, notably in Africa.

Sudanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will spend three billion Sudanese pounds (1.5 billion USD) up to the end of the year to implement a massive program to develop the agricultural sector.

Some of the world's richest nations are coming to grow crops and export the yields, hoping to turn the global epicenter of malnutrition into a breadbasket for themselves.

Once committed largely to perceived safe-haven investments in the United States, Gulf nations are now looking to send their petrodollar surpluses towards a more exotic global destination: Southeast Asian farmland.