The wheat farms in Sudan & Uganda are not Egypt’s first foray into overseas farming — the government operates a corn farm in Zambia, a rice farm in Niger, a vegetable farm in Tanzania and plans 14 more farms across Africa — but they are significant because they are among the first efforts to address wheat scarcity after the instability of 2008.
It seems that the mere mention of foreigners about to snap up our farmland to grow rice will make our blood of patriotism boil instantly. Yet, the same hostile attitude has never been detected from the Thai public or bureaucracy when big swathes of farmland are bought by Thai businessmen in order to transform them into housing or industrial estates.
The government was asked on Saturday to immediately stop all land deals being negotiated with foreign governments, investors, US seed company Monsanto and other agro-chemical companies promoting genetically-modified crops, especially BT cotton.
A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs
Small scale farmers from twelve African countries have decided to fight back amid ongoing threats of them being swallowed by large estates.
“The sell-out of vast tracts of agricultural lands to local and foreign agribusinesses and land-use conversion are now elevated as state policies.”
Most of the Orma and Pokomo communities living in the Tana River delta do not have title deeds and a government agency claims ownership of the land, but locals say the land was handed to them by their ancestors.
Janan, a UAE agricultural investment firm, will expand its farmland portfolio in a deal with Egyptian agricultural authorities next week.
Two House of Representatives committees were urged to conduct a joint investigation into the alleged anomalous lease contracts granted to Japanese and Korean investors involving vast tracks of lands in Northern Luzon and Mindoro provinces.
The Asharqia Chamber in Saudi Arabia has sent a circular to businessmen in the region to invest in agriculture projects overseas following a government directive
For investors like Susan Payne, the chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is a hot bet.
It is essential that governments and international agencies act now to create not only a uniform code of conduct guiding foreign land acquisitions, but also an enforcement mechanism.
