The South-Korean company Daewoo has announced that they want to plant corn on the fertile land of Madagascar to decrease their dependence of US import.
The land that Daewoo leases for the next 99 years is about half the size of Belgium. They hope to produce more than 5 million tons of corn each year.
They will use local workers and farming techniques from South Africa. Other countries that have a lack of arable land such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have also been seeking for agriculture investments in Africa or Asia. The African governments are very pleased with this. Angola and Ethiopia both declared they are willing to offer farmland to those rich investors.
This idea has his positive and negative sides. One of the downsides I come up with is the fact that if they exploit the farmland on a very intensive way they land will become infertile and the Africans end up with another piece of desert that is not suited for any form of farming. But on a general view I think it’s a good thing that the Asian and Arabic investors create a lot of job opportunities for the poor African people. We can only hope that they pay the workers a decent wage and that those initiatives bring prosperity and welfare to the poorer regions of the world.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7737643.stm
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