Le sud-coréen Daewoo va se lancer dans la culture de maïs et la production d'huile de palme à Madagascar, où le groupe bénéficie d'une licence d'exploitation de terres immenses pour une durée de quatre-vingt-dix-neuf ans.

Madagascar officials are enthusiastic about a company's big farming plans for an undeveloped area but say the deal won't go ahead if it threatens the island's unique ecology. An environmental impact assessment was to begin shortly, the Malagasy Environment Office said Thursday.

Cambodia is in talks with several Asian and Middle Eastern governments to receive as much as $3bn in agricultural investment in return for millions of hectares in land concessions, according to a senior government official.

A lot of countries don't grow nearly enough food to feed themselves. Britain is one; South Korea, another. The giant South Korean conglomerate, Daewoo, has come up with a novel way of solving the problem of food security. It has leased a vast tract of land, 1.3 million acres, on the African island of Madagascar.

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.

Daewoo Logistics Corp., a South Korean natural-resource development company, expects a project to lease vast tracts of farmland in Madagascar to grow corn and palm oil may cost about $6 billion over the first 20 years. The investment will pay for the lease costs as well as building a port, roads, irrigation, and power plants, along with schools and hospitals for locals, Shin Dong Hyun, a manager leading the project, said today by phone.

La compagnie Daewoo logistics entend planter du maïs sur une surface totale de 1 million d'hectares.

Pirates are not the only source of concern off the African coast. The deal South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics is negotiating with the Madagascan government looks rapacious. Alas, it is but the latest brazen example of a wider phenomenon.

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea said it expected to pay nothing to farm maize and palm oil in an area of Madagascar half the size of Belgium, increasing concerns about the largest farmland investment of this kind.

A South Korean company hopes to turn an undeveloped stretch of Madagascar into a corn-production center, an official said Wednesday.

South Korea's Daewoo Logistics will plant corn in Madagascar, a company official said on Tuesday, with a long-term aim to replace more than half the corn it currently imports from mostly the United States.

Daewoo Logistics of South Korea has secured farmland in Madagascar to grow food crops for Seoul, in a deal that diplomats and consultants said was the largest of its kind.