Emami Biotech's project has already begun at Awash Sebat Kilo some 250 km east of the capital Addis Ababa growing Jatropha, sunflower, castor, pulses and various herbs at a cost of $24 million.
Because of the political sensitivity of the modern-day land grab, it is often only the country's head of state who knows the details. Der Spiegel investigates.
L'Ethiopie a délimité 1,6 million d'hectares de terres arables qu'elle réserve à des investisseurs, souvent étrangers, pour qu'ils y développent des exploitations agricoles, a déclaré mercredi un responsable.
"The government has verified and delineated 1.6 million hectares of virgin land suitable for large-scale commercial farming in different parts of the country," Esayas Kebede, Director of the recently formed Agricultural Investment Support told Reuters.
The Confederation of Indian Industry disagrees with critics of India's foreign landgrabbing for agriculural production
Private Saudi firm Planet Food World (PFWC) will invest around $3 billion in agriculture in Turkey over the next five years to export food products to the Gulf region, the head of its Turkish unit said.
India, once the colonial jewel of Britain's empire, has been accused of 'neo-colonialism' in Africa where its business people have joined a race with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to buy up agricultural estates and take advantage of cheap labour.
I wonder why the people (and more importantly the political leaders and elite) of the African and Latin American countries are not opposing and driving these companies out from within their national borders. The reason is simple. The rich and elite of every country is the real beneficiary of the process of globalisation.
Indian firms have signed land deals in Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar to produce a range of food crops for export to India.
Codes of conduct don’t work, said Devinder Sharma of Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, Delhi. “It is unethical to grab land in other countries; it will lead to food crisis as investor countries will grow food for profit.”
It's a tsunami of land deals and, as all of the experts who have studied the phenomenon have agreed, no nation is truly prepared for its implications.
Suudi tarım şirketi Planet Food World, Türkiye'de 20 milyar dolar yatırımla 5 yılda 20 bin modüler organik çiftlik kuracak.