Showing posts with label Indonesia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indonesia. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
New on Gulf's shopping list: Foreigners' farmland (IHT)
New on Gulf's shopping list: Foreigners' farmland
The Associated Press
Monday, November 17, 2008
NAHEL, United Arab Emirates: In the dunes around this sun-scorched desert village, where camels still plod along dusty roads an hour south of Dubai's skyscrapers, farmers are making the wasteland bloom.
Row upon row of bell peppers grow plump in a temperature-controlled greenhouse. Lilies and roses bud nearby, and strawberries are on their way, all thanks to sophisticated water-saving irrigation.
Yet even high-tech establishments like the Mirak Agricultural Services farms here and elsewhere in this riverless country will never feed the region's rapidly growing population. It is that realization that is persuading wealthy Gulf Arabs to look far beyond their shores for more fertile acreage - tens of thousands of hectares, in some cases.
There are simply too many mouths to feed and not enough water. Lush urban landscaping and ambitious agricultural projects here and in Saudi Arabia, which once spent so much on farm subsidies that it exported surplus wheat, are quickly draining aquifers, including some that are millennia old and cannot be refilled.
That stark reality, and rising food prices, is sending the region's leaders scrambling to lock up even more long-term food supplies abroad. And where once the region was content to spend its petrodollars on food sold on the open market, Gulf nations now are quietly scouring the globe for rich farmland to rent or buy outright.
The prime ministers of Qatar and Kuwait traveled separately to Cambodia this year to discuss securing paddy land for rice-growing. Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, visited Kazakhstan in central Asia, where agricultural investments were on the agenda.
Dubai World, a sprawling conglomerate controlled by that emirate's government, last month said it was creating a new subsidiary targeting global investments in a wide range of commodities, including food.
Plans are also accelerating in the private sector.
The Saudi Binladin Group, for example, is considering investing more than $4 billion to grow food in Indonesia, said Salim Segaf al-Jufri, the Indonesian ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Under the proposed project, the company would produce basmati rice in Sulawesi, Papua and western Java.
Most such talks are continuing in private. Of those companies that could be reached for comment, none made officials available to discuss their investments in detail. That may be because many of the deals are being hatched in volatile countries, such as Pakistan and Sudan, that have serious domestic food concerns of their own. The idea of shipping off homegrown crops to feed rich foreigners could stir dissent.
"These are countries that come with a lot of political baggage," said Eckart Woertz, program manager for economics at the Gulf Research Center, which estimates the Gulf's conventional water resources will be gone within three decades. "People riot when they don't get food."
Experts say the agriculture investments could be a win-win situation. The Gulf gains food security, while poorer developing countries benefit from added jobs and improved technology.
But there are concerns, too.
The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, has warned that foreign land acquisition and long-term leasing schemes, if done poorly, risk "creating a neocolonial pact" and "unacceptable work conditions for agricultural workers."
Even so, some countries are seeking out investment.
Pakistan, already a key source of labor for the Gulf, has been among the most active. This spring, Islamabad helped organize a show in Dubai aimed at increasing investment in the country's agricultural and dairy industries.
Huma Fakhar, managing partner at MAP Services Group, a market research and trade consultant which sponsored the event, said Pakistan was a logical choice for Gulf investment.
Fakhar said an investor from Abu Dhabi, whom she declined to name, last year bought about 16,000 hectares, or 40,000 acres, of farmland in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Two UAE firms, Emirates Investments Group and Abraaj Capital, have also expressed interest in investing directly in Pakistani agriculture, she said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/17/asia/gulf.php
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Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Food crisis in retreat, but 'major emergency' still exists (IHT)
By Laura MacInnisReuters
Sunday, October 19, 2008
GENEVA: At first sight, it seems like good news for those fighting hunger around the world: the spikes in commodity prices that set off food riots this year have been all but erased amid the recent financial turmoil.
But relief officials now have another fear: that distracted donors will forget that the problem goes much deeper, and stop devoting time and money to a food emergency that will only be worsened by a now-looming recession.
"There is no automatic correlation between what happens in the wheat futures market in Chicago and the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan," said John Holmes, the top UN humanitarian aid official, who also coordinates a task force on the food crisis.
International food prices hit nine-month lows in September and have since tumbled farther as investors pulled their money from turbulent markets. In the past three weeks alone, corn futures have fallen 32 percent and soybean futures 28 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
"What we fear is that people will look at those prices and think that the crisis is over," Holmes said. "We still regard it as a very urgent crisis and a major emergency."
Many food commodities are now trading at around half their peaks in June, when the United Nations called an emergency meeting in Rome to tackle a crisis that had sparked protests, strikes and riots in countries including Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Haiti, Peru, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Afghanistan.
At that time, the UN World Food Program called costlier food a "silent tsunami" threatening millions with starvation.
Now, the program says lower prices mean it can afford better nourishment for the 90 million people it helps feed around the world. "We may be able to buy slightly more food for our beneficiaries," Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.
The aid group Oxfam estimates that 967 million people worldwide now suffer from hunger - 119 million more than before high energy prices, biofuels, greater emerging market demands and speculation started to push up staple food costs.
Siwa Msangi, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, said those stresses had not disappeared. "There has probably been less financial market activity involving commodities, due to the overall economic situation, and some consumer demand may have dropped off. But the longer-term drivers of upward price pressure are still there," Msangi said.
Donor governments at the UN's Rome summit meeting pledged $12.3 billion to help bolster agricultural productivity and encourage farmers to plant more, especially in poor countries where huge numbers of agrarian workers are moving to cities.
But only $1 billion of that has been paid out so far, as bank failures and market stresses have distracted governments.
Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said he feared that the financial crisis might cause international commitments to invest in seeds, fertilizers and other yield-bolstering technologies to "evaporate."
"The great uncertainty now enveloping international markets and the threat of global recession may tempt countries towards protectionism and towards reassessing their commitments to international development aid," he said.
Holmes said the UN food crisis task force would meet again in the coming weeks.
Rice, a staple in much of Asia, remains relatively expensive, with prices still up 15 percent this year. "The prices are shooting down because the demand is pulling back," Pavel Vavra, a trade and agriculture expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said. "Whether it is going to last is difficult to predict."
Sunday, October 19, 2008
GENEVA: At first sight, it seems like good news for those fighting hunger around the world: the spikes in commodity prices that set off food riots this year have been all but erased amid the recent financial turmoil.
But relief officials now have another fear: that distracted donors will forget that the problem goes much deeper, and stop devoting time and money to a food emergency that will only be worsened by a now-looming recession.
"There is no automatic correlation between what happens in the wheat futures market in Chicago and the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan," said John Holmes, the top UN humanitarian aid official, who also coordinates a task force on the food crisis.
International food prices hit nine-month lows in September and have since tumbled farther as investors pulled their money from turbulent markets. In the past three weeks alone, corn futures have fallen 32 percent and soybean futures 28 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
"What we fear is that people will look at those prices and think that the crisis is over," Holmes said. "We still regard it as a very urgent crisis and a major emergency."
Many food commodities are now trading at around half their peaks in June, when the United Nations called an emergency meeting in Rome to tackle a crisis that had sparked protests, strikes and riots in countries including Cameroon, Mozambique, Senegal, Haiti, Peru, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Afghanistan.
At that time, the UN World Food Program called costlier food a "silent tsunami" threatening millions with starvation.
Now, the program says lower prices mean it can afford better nourishment for the 90 million people it helps feed around the world. "We may be able to buy slightly more food for our beneficiaries," Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.
The aid group Oxfam estimates that 967 million people worldwide now suffer from hunger - 119 million more than before high energy prices, biofuels, greater emerging market demands and speculation started to push up staple food costs.
Siwa Msangi, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, said those stresses had not disappeared. "There has probably been less financial market activity involving commodities, due to the overall economic situation, and some consumer demand may have dropped off. But the longer-term drivers of upward price pressure are still there," Msangi said.
Donor governments at the UN's Rome summit meeting pledged $12.3 billion to help bolster agricultural productivity and encourage farmers to plant more, especially in poor countries where huge numbers of agrarian workers are moving to cities.
But only $1 billion of that has been paid out so far, as bank failures and market stresses have distracted governments.
Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said he feared that the financial crisis might cause international commitments to invest in seeds, fertilizers and other yield-bolstering technologies to "evaporate."
"The great uncertainty now enveloping international markets and the threat of global recession may tempt countries towards protectionism and towards reassessing their commitments to international development aid," he said.
Holmes said the UN food crisis task force would meet again in the coming weeks.
Rice, a staple in much of Asia, remains relatively expensive, with prices still up 15 percent this year. "The prices are shooting down because the demand is pulling back," Pavel Vavra, a trade and agriculture expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said. "Whether it is going to last is difficult to predict."
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A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew
Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
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Auvergne
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France
Rural France
Blogs about France
Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental
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