Thailand

The UAE Government is holding talks with Thailand about plans to develop huge livestock farms in the Southeast Asian country.

The issue of food security is getting higher on Riyadh’s priority list.

In 2006, Thailand had about 25 million farmers, who accounted for 40% of the population. The number is likely fall to 37% of the population by 2013. The government must act to reverse the trend, otherwise investors could rent or buy land from farmers to invest in large-scale farming, agricultural processing plants and hiring local people.

The region continues to have great market potential as a number of Thai rice companies have offices there and some have been approached by local governments to invest there in milling, processing and even growing rice.

Capital Rice and Asia Golden Rice, both in Thailand, recently formed a business alliance with the Stallion Group, Nigeria's largest conglomerate, to supply rice to this major African market. The next step is to export rice-planting know-how and invest in Nigerian farmland.

A conference for fund managers tied to agriculture held annually in Sydney by Austock, an Australian broker, attracted a few dozen contrarian souls three years ago. This year’s event, which began on March 16th, had to be restricted to several hundred ticket-holders, with many others turned away.

"Since 2005, the Burmese Government has encouraged investors from China, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Kuwait to invest in contract farms," reports the US mission in Rangoon

Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.

The initial welcome given to rich countries’ investment in African farmland by agricultural and development officials has faded as the first ventures prove to be heavily weighted in favour of the investors. The FAO warned of such a trend when it said this year that the race to secure farmland overseas risked creating a “neo-colonial” system.

Myanmar proposed to Bangladesh to take lease of at least 50,000 acres of land in its Rakhine state for contract farming of paddy, onion, maize, soybean, tea, and sugarcane

Qudra Holding plans to buy about 400,000 hectares of land in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East by the first quarter of 2009 to boost its agriculture operations, reported The National.

Three new investment funds controlled by prominent Gulf investors will sink at least US$2.8 billion (Dh10.3 bn) into infrastructure, agriculture and hospitality projects in the Middle East and South Asia.