Agrokultura

The EBRD is providing a loan of up to US$85 million to Ukrainian agribusiness producer PJSC Myronivsky Hliboproduct to support the integration of farms from the former Swedish-owned company Agrokultura.

Stockholm-listed Agrokultura, with Russian sports retail tycoon Nikolay Fartushnyak now as its top investor, has yet to report a profit since it was founded in 2006.

Russian agribusiness giant Prodimex is said to have bought 27% of Stockholm-listed farmland operator Agrokultura, which has operations in Ukraine and Russia.

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.

Ukraine has ditched proposals to allow foreigners to buy up its farmland in a privatisation process, to prevent wealthy multinationals snapping up its farmland on the cheap.

Many Ukrainians now prefer to lease their land rather than work it themselves.

Nombre d'Ukrainiens préfèrent louer leurs droits fonciers plutôt que d'exploiter leur parcelle.

The collapse in Ukraine's land prices presents a "great opportunity" for buyers, Landkom's chief executive said, as he revealed an acquisition plan aimed at part into getting the group into biofuels refining

Ukraine has abundant land resource, only ten per cent of which is currently controlled by corporations.

There is something amazingly patronising in the way Payne claims that Emergent has ‘adopted’ a Mozambican village of 3,000 people and hired its citizens to clear 2,000 acres of land to farm it with her firm.

"The reasons [Ukrainians] choose to lease [Landkom] their land has nothing to do with money - it is an emotional desire to see their region go forward, that's all," says Paul Spinks.