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.

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.

The Saudi Arabia-based Binladin Group is expected to wrap up a feasibility study by the end of this year on investment in a massive food business program that will be located primarily in the eastern part of Indonesia, a senior official says.

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

Agcapita allows investors to gain direct exposure to a key part of the agriculture commodity bull market story - Canadian farmland.

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.

Due to the lack of arable land in its home market, Savola must look abroad for agricultural land and has named Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Ukraine as target countries where it plans to buy the land necessary to grow seeds such as sunflower and corn seeds.

Gulf nations now are quietly scouring the globe for rich farmland to rent or buy outright.

As the Gulf's agricultural production rates slow and food prices around the world continue to rise, GCC members are investing heavily in the fertile lands of Africa and Asia.