Ethiopia: Can Foreign-Owned Farms Solve Food Crisis?
-
-
- ras_menelik
- added this
A new plan
Authorities seem determined to change this situation by leasing huge chunks of land to other sovereign states for mechanised farming.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has promised Saudi Arabia that his country will provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of unutilised agricultural land for growing cereals in the east African country. This is a follow up to an earlier pledge by Ethiopia to grant 5,000 hectares of land to the Djibouti government for large-scale commercial farming.
The Ethiopian agriculture ministry is identifying available land for such foreign investors; so far close to two million hectares of land have been identified in the regions of Oromia and Amhara, where almost all cereals in the country are produced.
Pundits however are wary of the risk; not just the food but the profits from this farming would be siphoned off to consumers and investors in other countries.
While the government argues that the food produced would be available to domestic markets as well as for export, analysts fear that almost all of it would leave the country because Ethiopians cannot possibly compete with the prices foreign consumers would pay for it.
Saudi Arabia is already one of the top three trading partners of Ethiopia; speaking to the Arab News newspaper in August, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, said trade volume between the two countries stood at one billion dollars. Ethiopia imports half a billion dollars more in the form of Saudi oil and petroleum than its exports of coffee, meat and other agricultural products. Zenawi said about 240 Saudi companies have been given investment licenses, and they are expected to invest $2.5 billion.
"When local prices go up, these investors sell their outputs locally at the price that customers would pay if they were to import the same agricultural outputs from another country , Hashim A. Ahmed, macro-economic policy advisor to the government, told IPS. "They don't necessarily sell their outputs overseas."
There are reports that Saudi Arabia and China are out buying farmland all over the world, from Somalia to Kazakhstan. But other countries short of fertile agricultural land to feed hungry populations are also involved. A closer look reveals an impressive list of countries seeking fertile land: Egypt, Djibouti and Libya in Africa; China, India, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea in Asia; and Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East.
Ethiopia is just one of over a hundred countries targeted.
Authorities seem determined to change this situation by leasing huge chunks of land to other sovereign states for mechanised farming.
The Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has promised Saudi Arabia that his country will provide hundreds of thousands of hectares of unutilised agricultural land for growing cereals in the east African country. This is a follow up to an earlier pledge by Ethiopia to grant 5,000 hectares of land to the Djibouti government for large-scale commercial farming.
The Ethiopian agriculture ministry is identifying available land for such foreign investors; so far close to two million hectares of land have been identified in the regions of Oromia and Amhara, where almost all cereals in the country are produced.
Pundits however are wary of the risk; not just the food but the profits from this farming would be siphoned off to consumers and investors in other countries.
While the government argues that the food produced would be available to domestic markets as well as for export, analysts fear that almost all of it would leave the country because Ethiopians cannot possibly compete with the prices foreign consumers would pay for it.
Saudi Arabia is already one of the top three trading partners of Ethiopia; speaking to the Arab News newspaper in August, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, said trade volume between the two countries stood at one billion dollars. Ethiopia imports half a billion dollars more in the form of Saudi oil and petroleum than its exports of coffee, meat and other agricultural products. Zenawi said about 240 Saudi companies have been given investment licenses, and they are expected to invest $2.5 billion.
"When local prices go up, these investors sell their outputs locally at the price that customers would pay if they were to import the same agricultural outputs from another country , Hashim A. Ahmed, macro-economic policy advisor to the government, told IPS. "They don't necessarily sell their outputs overseas."
There are reports that Saudi Arabia and China are out buying farmland all over the world, from Somalia to Kazakhstan. But other countries short of fertile agricultural land to feed hungry populations are also involved. A closer look reveals an impressive list of countries seeking fertile land: Egypt, Djibouti and Libya in Africa; China, India, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea in Asia; and Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East.
Ethiopia is just one of over a hundred countries targeted.
