Alpcot Agro

The company, which changed its name from Alpcot Agro, is considering selling its farms in Ukraine.

The group, formerly known as Alpcot Agro, said it had signed deals on the disposal of 24,800 hectares of land, mainly in central and southern Ukraine, to other farming groups for $5.6m excluding machinery, buildings and crops.

"I’ve put together a table with what I think are the main Swedish land investments in Russia and Ukraine," writes Brian Kuns. "In doing this, I ran into some of the known difficulties associated with monitoring the phenomenon of large-scale land-acquisition."

With the merger, Alpcot Agro now controls well over 250,000 hectares of farmland in Russia and the Ukraine.

Bloomberg's Alan Katz reports on Morgan Stanley's farming venture on the steppes of Ukraine which it abandoned in July 2009. The failed gamble demonstrates how Wall Street firms, in the last gasp of a debt-fueled bull market, strayed further from their traditional businesses to embrace diverse projects with unfamiliar risks.

"We are seeing a land grab bigger than anywhere else in the world, and it has attracted a mighty cast of characters," says Kingsmill Bond, chief strategist at Troika Dialog, a Moscow brokerage firm.

Investors are pouring billions into Russian agribusiness—and trying to reverse decades of Soviet mismanagement.

“I am satisfied with what we have achieved during the first half of 2008. We have been able to combine a fast increase in land under control with successful operations. The harvested area is estimated to be approximately 53,900 hectares with an estimated harvest of approximately 150,600 tonnes, which is higher than expected.”

Alpcot Agro is currently in control of 128,800 hectares of arable land in Russia and wants to control 200,000 hectares by the end of 2008.