Food security fears drove Koreans to buy African farmland, while climate change fears prompted the president of the Maldives to contemplate a new homeland.
 | Land GrabRice field in Madagascar. The island nation has leased huge tracts of its arable land to a Korean company to grow food for Koreans (Photo: Shutterstock) |
When Daewoo Logistics leased almost half of Madagascar’s arable land to grow food for South Korea, the deal marked a new kind of Scramble for Africa. Several other rich countries that are big importers of food—including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Libya—also spent 2008 looking overseas for fertile soil to ensure food security.
They were worried by volatile international food prices and interruption of food supplies in a year when countries like India, Ukraine, and Argentina curbed or taxed food exports.
The Daewoo deal was the biggest of its kind: 1.3 million hectares of farmland—about half the size of Belgium—for 99 years to grow corn and palm oil. An investment company in UAE followed up by saying it would buy 400,000 hectares of land in Africa and Asia in 2009. The Saudis have visited Sudan, Ukraine, Pakistan, and Thailand with similar intentions.
Ethiopia and Sudan, meanwhile, marketed their land, eyeing the long-overdue investment in advanced agricultural equipment and techniques such deals could bring. The Sudan government wants 1 billion dollars for 17 projects that would cover 880,000 hectares.
But while the government fished for investors, over 5 million Sudanese went hungry. Hunger is also widespread in Ethiopia, which is “very eager” to provide land to Middle Eastern countries, according to prime minister Meles Zenawi.
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, warned against developing a “neo-colonial” agricultural system that could see small-scale farmers pushed off their lands as soil, like minerals or fossil fuels, becomes a strategic and commercial asset.
While South Korea and Saudi Arabia looked for farmland, Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, was looking for a new homeland.
He announced plans for a sovereign wealth fund that would buy a new territory for the 369,000 people of the Maldives if rising sea levels flooded the archipelago. Over 80 percent of the Maldives is less than 1 meter above sea level.
Sri Lanka and India seem the most likely candidates for this insurance policy taken out for a whole nation. The years to come will show whether this was just a clever marketing ploy aimed at tourists or one of the most prophetic warnings about the devastating effects of climate change.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: December 19, 2008
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