The race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a “neo-colonial” system, the United Nations’ top agriculture official, Jacques Diouf, has cautioned.
Kuwait is talking with Asian countries about securing food supplies and investing in agriculture as the Gulf state looks to diversify its sources of food, state news agency KUNA reported yesterday.
In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, His Highness the Prime Minister od Kuwait’s visit was of great importance given the promising financial investment opportunities in those nations. One of the main topics discussed was food imports from these countries as a means for securing food supply, facilitating a Kuwaiti energy supply to them, as well as cooperation in oil exploration and the agricultural field.
Cru, a small specialist fund management firm, recently launched a Malawi-based fund called Africa Invest. The fund has made an initial investment of £2m in 2,000 hectares of land that’s producing paprika for western supermarkets. With land prices starting at £800 per hectare (compared to £10,000 in the UK) it’s relatively easy to amass large farms that can be upgraded with new technology, mechanisation and better production methods. According to Cru, annual returns on capital should exceed 30 to 40 per cent.
The company will conduct a feasibility study of the proposed land area, in the Merauke district of Indonesia’s Papua province, before making their final decision. “We have been looking at other locations that might be suitable but Indonesia is first on our list,” a spokesperson said.
Indonesia's Minister of Agriculture and other senior government officials Tuesday said they met with senior members of Saudi Arabia's Binladin Group to discuss the investment group's plans to spend at least $4 billion developing at least 500,000 hectares of Indonesian land for rice production.
The Chinese government is more and more worried over the control that overseas firms are exercising over a good portion of China’s food supply, and there is even some thought that the recent inflation might have been triggered by foreign food giants as they have expanded into every corner of China’s agriculture.
THE Qatar Company for Meat and Livestock Trading (Mawashi) is looking towards investing in Kurdistan since that region in Iraq is the source of Arabian livestock, which has a high demand in the region, an official said yesterday.
A United Kingdom agro-based firm, Transfor-mation Agrictech has said plan are in the pipeline to tackle the lingering food crisis in four states of Abia, Rivers, Delta and Ebonyi, through by revolutionalised agriculture, which would culminate in the massive production of rice and cassava for both domestic use and export purposes.
Small-scale farmers with limited knowledge of their rights stand to lose most as countries such as China and Saudi Arabia expand their quest for African farmland, analysts have warned.
Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.
Big Money from Wall St. to the Middle East are on the hunt for farmland. Canada, especially Ontario, stands to profit but will the costs be too great?
