Lease contracts covering millions of hectares of agricultural lands signed by the Philippines Department of Agriculture with foreign entities during the Arroyo administration are currently being reviewed to determine if they are in accord with the current administration’s food security plan.
The Philippines agriculture department plans to persuade San Miguel Corp to resort to contract growing instead of leasing state land when it undertakes a planned farming venture.
Indigenous organization in the Philippines calls for the pulling out of a palm oil plantation project in their community.
"The desire of foreign monopoly capitalists in the US to acquire lands in PH is an open book. It is not a best kept secret. The monopolists in the US also want 100 percent ownership of other profitable sectors in the Philippines including but not limited to mining, eco-tourism, energy, public utilities, mass media, oil and gas, health and education."
By Gang Gong Li, Gerry Albert Corpuz and Portnip Pakangcharap
China is keen on entering into lease agreements with the Philippines to develop unused land for agriculture, says Chinese Ambassador to Manila.
Korea wants to secure a total of 380,000 hectares of overseas farmland by 2018, the agriculture ministry said in an e-mailed statement today. Priority countries include the Philippines, Cambodia, Ukraine, Indonesia and Russia.
Peasant leaders and agrarian reform advocates joined their Filipinos counterparts in the first “International Speak Out Against Global Land grabbing” held in Quezon City.
Fifteen private firms from mainland China -- including Beidahuang Group -- are in the Philippines looking for investment partners in the agriculture sector
The Philippines is among the leading target countries for land deals despite provisions in the Constitution barring foreigners from owning land.
An international fact-finding team is in the country to investigate the alleged land-grabbing by Philippine, Japanese and Taiwanese companies of some 11,000 hectares from indigenous peoples in Isabela to build the biggest bio-ethanol project in the Philippines.
The South Koreans are looking for as much as 100,000 in idle agricultural land in the Philippines that can be planted to crops for domestic consumption and for export.
