Rich countries are buying poor agricultural land

Countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait buy cheap huge areas of agricultural land worldwide. There, they grow food and fuel for their own needs. The fighting on the best soils with equity and pension funds. Those who can move are family farmers in the world's poorest countries.

the foodcrise which followed the financial crisis tracks have made agricultural land very attractive to two new categories of buyers last year. Firstly, there is a number of countries that are dependent on food imports to feed its population and has become nervous about the rapidly rising food prices. They are now looking to buy land and to ensure a food for its domestic market.partly are financial investors, including equity and pension funds that need to move their capital from the collapse of securities markets. Agricultural land is not something they have been accustomed to invest in, but with the rising food prices and still low land prices they see an opportunity to get a return on their capital over a prolonged global economic recession. Everyone must surely eat. The identification of such land are in a report by Grain, an international organization for sustainable agriculture while preserving biological diversity and democratic control over genetic resources and local knowledge. Grain delfinanseras of the Swedish partner SweBio, a Sida-supported program for biodiversity.

Food for domestic market

The countries that make the biggest takeover is China and the Gulf States. China supplies so far itself with food, but has problems with water shortages. With its large surplus of savings it would invest in land for future needs. Recently, the China Development Bank appropriated five billion U.S. dollars for Chinese companies' investment in African agriculture. Gulf countries have a more immediate need, since their food imports in the last five years has risen in price by 250 percent. The lobbying mainly Sudan and Pakistan with the promise of equity and oil in exchange for land and the possibility of exporting food to the home countries. Other countries in the slightly smaller-scale buying up land, Japan, Korea, Libya, Egypt and India. The countries canvassed, such as Uganda, Brazil, Cambodia, Sudan and Pakistan, where land is still cheap and there are good opportunities for large-scale cultivation. The welcome inflow of foreign capital and improve rural infrastructure, modernized warehouses and ports. It does not prevent the country buying leads to absurd situations. The Cambodian Prime Minister announced last year that Qatar and Kuwait had lease of Khmer paddy fields to the lent 600 million dollars to Cambodia. While estimated half million people in the Cambodian countryside missing meals because of lack of land and irrigation, the UN food aid ship food for 35 million dollars to the starving. In Sudan the situation is similar.

Swedish finance

The second category of land buyers, financial investors, closer to us individual Swedes, yes the fact is that it may be we ourselves who are seeking a return on our capital. The Swedish investment company, Black Earth Farming and Alpcot-Agro has announced big in the business press, and so far purchased 311 000 and 128 000 hectares of fertile black farmland in southern Russia. The financial sector is expected that food prices will be maintained because of the degradation of soils and water, while there is still cheap land to buy. the ten-year term hopes on the yields of 10-40 percent in the European countries, and up to 400 percent of the African. The companies have been supported by the World Bank and the EBRD in the attempt to get governments to relax the laws on foreign land owner. The argument is that foodcrisis should be addressed through investments that increase production and get more food on the world market. But many of the countries that the speculators will already have problems with food security and political conflicts around land reform and indigenous land rights. Foreign owner becomes extra controversial. Precise data on the size land areas, prices and conditions are reported almost never in public, but it is about large areas, millions of hectares. (With Scania's surface that is 1.1 million hectares) calculations, for example, shows that the Japanese company owns 12 million hectares abroad production of food and feed.

Protests are heard

The obvious risk is that a privatized and concentrated land displacing small-scale family agriculture and the opportunities to earn a living in rural areas in many countries around the world.It is not only the peasant movements which react over this development. The head of the UN food agency FAO, Jackques Diouf, has warned that the increase of land may lead to a kind of neo-colonialism, where the poor countries produce food for them rich at the expense of its own hungry population.

In November was the largest and most noted store. The South Korean company Daewoo Logistics received a free 99-year lease on one million hectares in Madagascar to grow maize for the Korean market. The protests that have followed have so far taken 125 lives. Uganda's parliament was called after the popular flash protests when it has spread information that Egyptian state would lease more than 840 000 hectares, which is 2.2 percent of Uganda's surface. In Pakistan protested peasant movements against a planned business with companies from Qatar, which would require 25 000 villages moved. Egyptian peasants struggling to get back in 1600 hectares of Japanese industrial group. In Indonesia, is expected to protest against a Saudi rice on 1.6 million hectares of land on which the Papuans should have the right to make their veto. Grains report concludes that states that buy land abroad to grow food for their own population's needs in familiar market mechanisms. States they no longer trust that free trade will give them what they need at the best price. Gulf expects to save one quarter of the cost of its foodimport by themselves grow in other countries and avoiding the middlemen in the world market.

"The security is sold out"

A major problem under the Grain is that local communities and family farms will inevitably lose access to land for local food production. The Food of the World Bank claims to protect at risk under the Grain to be sold out. Grain report is also highly critical of how agriculture in this way will necessarily industrialise, with large areas and custom infrastructure. Some states also their biological diversity, as investors take away everything including seeds from home. Grain determines that large investments needed in agriculture but questions whether this is the development of agriculture we want, and who it will benefit.


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Source: Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security, Breifing, October 2008