Our government is planning to offer Arab investors legislative cover to protect them from changes in the government, but hardly any attention has yet been given to the need for protecting poor labourers who will be working for Arab corporate agriculture companies
After centuries of supporting the world, it is now time for the world to support Africa, not grab her land and ravage her agriculture.
The Philippines and Bahrain have started talks on an agribusiness project in Mindanao that government hopes would generate 20,000 jobs.
Malaysia's biggest company Sime Darby has struck a deal with the Liberian government to develop oil palm and rubber estates in West African nation as land runs out at home and global demand for palm oil surges.
In its bid to experiment with new ideas, the Pakistani government has decided to play host to overseas investors keen on acquiring farmlands to capitalise on food insecurities post-2007-08 crisis.
After years of competing for overseas oil and mines, India and China are silently scouring the world for their next great need: farmland to grow food.
The outsourcing of food has suddenly become a very big business. Richard Ferguson, a Europe-based analyst for the Japanese investment bank Nomura, calls what is going on now the “third great wave” of outsourcing after manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s and information technology in the 1990s and 2000s. In his exhaustive 319-page report, he talks about the future of farming in terms of 1 million-hectare operations.
Agricultural investment in Sudan by Arab countries looking to guarantee supplies of staples such as wheat for their people will account for up to 50 percent of all investment in the country from 2010
Private equity used to stay away from anything to do with agriculture, put off by the uncontrollable risks of bad climate and natural disasters. And yet in the last three years some big funds have been launched in the agribusiness space, and they are busy trying different ways of mitigating the risks.
Neo-colonialists are buying up agricultural land in Africa – and local farmers could be crushed unless there are international rules to protect them.
The Caribbean is still struggling to develop a new agricultural model. While small scale agriculture and land ownership continues to have a deep rooted and emotional appeal, large scale farming with its echo of servitude–in the Anglophone Caribbean at least–remains far from attractive.
A delegation from Saudi Arabia is set to arrive in Manila next week to explore possible investments in the country's farm sector
