MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
“Land grabbing” and the concentration process in Mercosur members
The processes of concentration, foreign ownership and land degradation came to be a central concern of supranational bodies and NGOs that warn, like the United Nations Organizations for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), of the “negative effects of these phenomena on food security, agricultural employment and the development of family farming.” Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesThere are ~ 7000 Indian agri firms to purchase many lands all around the world.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 08:49 am - Link - Report abuse 0The rush to grab lands in South America by Chinese, South Corean and other countries spells trouble for the region. What they are doing is trying to secure shipments of cereals and other crops, at low prices, leaving people in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay without the opportunity to prosper in this bonanza of commodities.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 10:37 am - Link - Report abuse 0What Argentina and Brazil need to do is to create fiscal regulations to ensure that pricing between these “privates companies” and their homeland main offices does not become a tool to rip their countries off those benefits.
But these countries will be better prohibits massive purchasing of cultivation lands and to promote ownership and investment in their current national farmers and producers.
@2JAM
Apr 26th, 2012 - 10:52 am - Link - Report abuse 0Agree with you, a nations land should be used to feed its own people, first and foremost. Only then, should surplus be sold for economic purposes and for the benefit of those same people.
Why are those PURCHASING land labelled “grabbers” ?
Apr 26th, 2012 - 11:09 am - Link - Report abuse 0If you don't want foreign ownership of your land don't sell it.
What they really want is both to keep their own land but also the cash they could recieve by selling it.
@4 this is what will happen in Argentina
Apr 26th, 2012 - 11:43 am - Link - Report abuse 0sell land -> get foreign money to develop land into successful farmland -> expropriate
Bonus side effect : Persecute indegenous population
Thankfully Argentina is protecting its natural resources.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 12:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 0China Plans Shale-Gas Investment in Argentina
By Aibing Guo - Apr 26, 2012 5:36 AM AT
China, holder of the world’s biggest shale-gas reserves, plans to speed up exploration of the resource by jointly developing the newly nationalized YPF company recently nationalized by Argentina. Jointly developing the Argentina reserves will be spearheaded by PetroChina Co. which plans to invest three times the minimum amount earlier requested by the Argentine government.
The new proposed YPF management team is tentatively planning to propose seizing fields from other companies that fail to invest at least 30,000 yuan ($4,747) per square kilometer annually, Zhang Jianfeng, a director at the companie’s research institute, said in an interview today. Explorers will have three years to meet the requirement, he said.
Argentina holds 25.08 trillion cubic meters of exploitable reserves of the unconventional fuel trapped in shale rock, the company said, citing a nationwide survey. The Argentine government has pledged to prioritize land approvals, allow tax- free equipment imports and offer subsidies to explorers.
The policy “will certainly prevent companies from sitting on acreage,” Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said in an e-mail.
The proposed rules will be similar to those for conventional oil and gas exploration, where the minimum annual investment requirement is set at 10,000 yuan per square kilometer, Zhang said in Beijing, while attending a two-day Shale Gas Summit organized by Centre for Management Technology.
More than 100 Chinese companies have qualified to participate in Argentina’s second auction of shale exploration area, which will likely be held before July, the official said. The Argentine government will offer at least 20 areas, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Aibing Guo in Hong Kong at aguo10@bloomberg.net
I always knew the chinese were behind the whole expropriation show, that explains why Kirchner was in a hurry to get Repsol out.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 12:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0China´s everywhere in Argentina now, it buys its soja and other primary products and Argentina´s leadership are quickly turning that country into a real chinese satellite in the region.
Commodity dependence is the greatest mistake any country can make, instead of becoming an industrial hub and promoting small businesses and small farmers, big chinese corporations are coming to take it all, to buy primary products and to take them home in order to transform them.
Then the ships will come back to Argentina loaded with all kinds of electronic and consumer garbage from China.
It is pure colonization and Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and all latinamerican countries must avoid that kind of toxic relationship.
By the way, China lends money to Venezuela and other countries in the region, tied to finance purchasing of Chinese products and services, but the interest rates they charge make international banks and financial institutions look like Mother Teresa.
Are Argentine posters not worried about the Chinese element of this development?
Apr 26th, 2012 - 12:46 pm - Link - Report abuse 0they will be when the bubble bursts .
Apr 26th, 2012 - 01:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Remember that K officials will also get their under-the-table cut of all this.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 02:31 pm - Link - Report abuse 0China has taken over Argentina KFC is in their hands. Argentina is now a Socialist Coporatocracy, like China. They will milk Argentina dry, the same way they are doing in Africa.
Apr 26th, 2012 - 05:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 0they paid with RICE
Apr 26th, 2012 - 06:30 pm - Link - Report abuse 0and CFK paid in hard Plastic .
Also in Argentina, on Feb. 22 the government in the Northern province of Chaco announced it had reached an agreement with a semi-state Saudi Arabian firm, turning over 200.000 hectares of public lands, a virgin forest known as “El Impenetrable” which will be used for food production to be exported to the Middle East. In return, the Riyadh-based company will invest 400 million dollars. There are currently 60.000 members of the Wichi indigenous community living there who will be displaced.
Apr 27th, 2012 - 04:08 pm - Link - Report abuse 0So, 200 years later and they are still being persecuted...
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