A panel of experts speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center here today discussed how governments—scared by high global grain prices and volatile commodities markets—and investors, who see farmland as a stable investment, are increasingly acquiring farmland overseas.
Wealthy, food-importing, water-scarce countries of East Asia, for example, are buying up land in poorer countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, they said.
By late 2008, five countries—China, South Korea, Japan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia—stood out for the amount of foreign arable land they had acquired.
That’s 7.6 million hectares of cultivable land overseas—or more than five times the land under cultivation in Belgium.
The experts suggest a new code of conduct and measures to make it stick.
They also called for transparency through media access, and for governments and civil society to keep an eye out for the interests of locals.
Panelists included:
Carl Atkin – Partner and Head of Research, Bidwells Agribusiness
Gary R. Blumenthal – President and CEO, World Perspectives, Inc.
David Hallam – Deputy Director, Trade and Markets Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Chido Makunike – Agricultural Exporter and Consultant (Senegal)
Ruth Meinzen-Dick – Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Raul Q. Montemayor – National Manager, Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives, Inc. (Philippines)
Alexandra Spieldoch – Director, Trade and Global Governance Program, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Uncategorized
