1.6 million hectares of land leased by Hun Xen's regime to Saudi Arabia

Grab the land

According to reports, Arab investors are buying agricultural land in Israel.

Aug 17th, 2009
Aarti Nagraj
KippReport

Wealthy individuals from the Gulf countries have recently purchased hundreds of acres of agricultural land in the occupied region of Galilee, reported Israel Radio this week. Farmers in Galilee reportedly tried to prevent the sale, but failed to do so as they did not have sufficient funds to buy the land from its owners. The Israel Lands Administration told the radio station that it could not interfere with the deal because the lands are privately-owned.

While the move has come under heavy criticism from political leaders in Israel, if true, it is the latest example of the increasing importance being given to agricultural land by people in the Arab world.

In recent years, in a bid to reduce food imports, several Gulf countries have been investing heavily in farmland in developing countries such as Pakistan, the Philippines and Ethiopia. Last year, Gulf States imported 80 percent of their food at a cost of $20 billion.

According to reports, Cambodia has a $546 million loan from Kuwait for agricultural projects, a $200 million venture with Qatar and has leased 1.6 million hectares of land to Saudi Arabia.

The Philippines is in talks with Qatar to lease around 100,000 hectares of agricultural land, and has a $500 million joint agri-business venture with Kuwait. Saudi also recently announced that it would allocate around $240 million to establish fruit plantations and support aquaculture and halal food processing projects in the Philippines. The UAE has 3,000 hectares in the country for agriculture projects.

Vietnam announced plans to establish a $1 billion investment fund with Qatar last year primarily for investment in food production for export.

But it’s not just for food, Gulf countries are also looking at the financially lucrative side of the agricultural industry.

Last year, the Qatari Investment Authority founded a company, Hassad Food, only to invest in existing agricultural businesses and projects around the world and re-export the produce.

“We are driven by profits and not just food security and right now the economic crisis has created a lot of opportunities for us to invest in financially distressed companies,” its chairman, Nasser Mohamed Al Hajri told Reuters earlier this month. The company is in talks with a number of agricultural companies in Argentina and other parts of South America, he said.

Earlier this month, Jenaan, a private agricultural investment firm in Abu Dhabi announced a AED925 million farmland deal in Egypt. The company plans to grow wheat on 42,000 hectares in south-western Egypt, and according to Jenaan, the produce will be “strictly for Egyptian consumption.

In July this year, Sami al-Araji, the head of the Iraqi National Investment, said during a visit to the UAE that the country was planning to offer agricultural land on a long-term rental basis to investors from the Gulf in order to revive its agricultural sector.

However, this growing trend has come under criticism from international bodies; Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said recently that a new kind of “neo-colonialism” could appear from land deals where poor Southeast Asian countries produce food for export to rich Gulf States rather than feed their own malnourished people.

Earlier this year, the United Nations also said that farmers’ rights could be compromised in developing nations because of rich countries buying up their farmland.

45% of Cambodia is estimated to have been "sold off" to foreign interests

‘Obscene’ agri investments

08/10/2009
Philippine Daily Inquirer

"In fact, the situation in Cambodia (where about 45 percent of the country is estimated to have been “sold off” to foreign interests through various agricultural deals) might come off as worse, and far more obscene, than in the Philippines."

Much appreciation for Ceres Doyo’s recent column on the land grab issue. (Inquirer, 7/30/09) Finally someone has written about it in a major broadsheet. I hope other journalists will follow suit. We have been flagging this issue to different groups and journalists in the Philippines since last year, pointing out to them a global report we compiled. This can be found at http://www. grain.org/briefings/?id=212. We also maintain a collaborative, open-publishing blog that keeps track of what’s happening: http://farmlandgrab.org/.

If I may just share a few thoughts:

The thing with this “agricolonialism” (as you aptly call it) is that it comes in the form of agricultural investments—which makes it seem “appealing” rather than repulsive to the ordinary public. Often negotiated between governments at the behest of private companies, the “deals” often talk of millions of dollars in investments without much regard for its consequences. A year ago, at the height of the rice crisis, the Bahraini government was negotiating with the Department of Foreign Affairs to lease about 40,000 hectares in the Philippines to grow rice for export back to Bahrain. Someone from the DFA reasoned that it’s a win-win deal since the country needs more investments so that it can afford to import the rice that it needs.

This trend is not an isolated case. In fact, the situation in Cambodia (where about 45 percent of the country is estimated to have been “sold off” to foreign interests through various agricultural deals) might come off as worse, and far more obscene, than in the Philippines. In Pakistan, some of the land deals directly compete with local food security. But if Asia has been hit bad, Africa is being hit worse. Indeed this “colonialism” is a global phenomenon. Just over a month ago, there was a private sector meeting in New York City focused on farmland investment, called “Global AgInvesting 2009: Commodities/Land/Infrastructure.”

In the meeting, most of the participants were convinced that they could take over cheap farmlands and, by converting them into modern, high-yield farms, they could increase their values and sell the lands at substantial profits. For some, this was their central business plan; for others, it was their exit strategy—but in all cases land values were sources of profit. They all seemed to think that the increasing demand for food was going to drive up farmland prices (and water prices!), and they wanted to cash in on this.

Certainly this trend has to be stopped.

Anyway, this is a long and winding way of saying thanks to Doyo for drawing attention to this issue. Keep up the good work.

—VLADY RIVERA,
vlady@grain.org

ASIA: Land grabs threaten food security

Land grabbing in Asia

CAMBODIA:

• Land being leased by Kuwait for rice (in negotiations)
• 100,000ha rubber plantation secured by Vietnam

LAOS:

• 100,000ha rubber plantation secured by Vietnam

PHILIPPINES:

• 10,000ha for agro-fishery secured by Bahrain
• 100,000ha for Qatar
• 1.24 million hectares for an unknown company in China (on hold)

INDONESIA:

• 500,000ha, a $4.3 billion rice investment, secured by Bin Laden Group of Saudi Arabia (on hold)

CHINA:

• 10 poultry farms worth $300 million and pig farms for $250-300 million purchased by Goldman Sachs of USA

Source: International Food Policy Research Institute

PHNOM PENH, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) - Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor.

"I've heard the rumours about [Kuwait and Qatar]. I heard they might get our land because they need food," he said.

"The commune leaders haven't talked to us yet, and I don't think they will if the time comes. This is a good time for them to get paid and get huge benefits."

Last year, delegations from oil-rich Kuwait and Qatar visited the impoverished nation, eyeing leases on land to export food back home - a move that could leave many Cambodians without enough food, say activists and NGOs.

Kuwait has reportedly offered US$546 million to the Southeast Asian nation in loans for dams and roads, while Qatar will invest $200 million in agriculture.

And while the government has not yet announced what the Gulf States will get in return, they have publicly expressed interest in the country’s farmland.

"Cambodia has plenty of farmland and forests but has been suffering from land grabbing by the government as well as influential people for years," Jin Ju, a food rights activist at the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) , told IRIN from Hong Kong.

"I doubt that [either] government would consider the villagers and farmers as equal decision-makers," she said.

Evictions

Forced evictions, mostly to build hotels and high-end apartments, have been a problem in Cambodia since the UN peacekeeping force left in 1993.

Adhoc, the Cambodian human rights watchdog, estimates 50,000 people were evicted to make way for development projects in 2006 and 2007 alone.

The problem arose because most land documents were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979, making it unclear who owns what.

Yet the practice in Cambodia of leasing land to Gulf States for farming - and the rate at which the land is being siphoned off - is new, say food rights groups.

"The governments [Kuwait and Cambodia] should select appropriate land through discussion with the villagers, and combine the traditional farming in Cambodia and new technology for farming," Ju added.

Food insecurity

The problem of land grabbing by foreign investors and governments, however, extends well beyond the confines of Cambodia.

Elsewhere in Asia similar examples can be seen, as well as in Africa. According to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), between 15 and 20 million hectares of farmland in such countries have been subject to transactions or negotiations since 2006.

IFPRI estimates the value of such deals at up to $30 billion.

Ever since high food prices in 2007 and 2008 raised the prospect of food insecurity for countries without much farmland, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have scoured Asia for land.

China, which has to feed more than one billion people, is also looking to Southeast Asia to sustain its breakneck growth.

"Not only will it displace small farmers as such investments have done in Indonesia," said Amitava Mukherjee, head of the UN Asian and Pacific Centre for Agricultural Engineering and Machinery in Beijing, "but it will also have serious environmental consequences … [and] given that UAE and Kuwait are leasing land, not buying it, [they] would have no interest in long-term development of the farmland they are seeking access to".

He added that the comments were his own and did not reflect the views of the UN.

In Kamukhaan village in the Philippines, such effects have become well documented, according to the AHRC.

Since a Filipino company took over 613ha in the village to build a banana plantation in 1981 - to supply US-based fruit company Dole - hundreds of villagers have suffered skin and respiratory ailments from pesticide use, the group claims.

"The farmers had lost their farmland, their children, their natural sources, their health and their future," Ju said.

Photo: Stacey Winston/ECHO
Myanmar has "considerable" agricultural potential, according to Welt Hunger Hilfe, a German NGO

"Now the Philippines' food sovereignty is absent and the self-sufficiency is almost zero," she claimed.

In the Philippines this year, Bahrain secured 10,000ha for agro-fishery, Qatar leased 100,000ha, and an unknown company from China leased 1.24 million hectares, though the deal has been put on hold, according to an April policy briefing by IFPRI.

Such deals are often done in secret, it says, stopping civil society groups from overseeing the terms and defending the rights of local farmers.

In Myanmar, Chinese companies have driven farmers off their land to cultivate an oil plant, according to Welt Hunger Hilfe, a German NGO.

The farmers already faced seasonal changes that threatened food security, but had their last source of food taken from them by the government, the group says.

Cambodia debates merits of land sales [shrouded in secrecy by Hun Sen's regime]

A farmer ploughs a paddy field at Somrong Tong district, Kampong Speu province, about 60km west of Phnom Penh. Chor Sokunthea / Reuters

May 31. 2009
Jared Ferrie, Foreign Correspondent
The National (United Arab Emirates)

PHNOM PENH -- At first glance, one could hardly ask for better circumstances for bilateral trade agreements: Cambodia is economically poor, but rich in farmland; Gulf states lack land to grow food, but have money to pay for it. So Cambodia has been signing deals with Kuwait and Qatar to help develop its agricultural sector.

Cambodian officials, however, refuse to disclose details of the agreements, which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Such secrecy has triggered warnings that foreign investors could find themselves embroiled in violent land disputes, which have plagued Cambodia in recent years.

Those concerns were raised recently by the UN’s committee on economic, social and cultural rights. Committee experts asked Cambodia’s representative, Sun Suon, “whether everything, including companies, land rights, could be bought; whether a rice concession made to Kuwait could have negative effects”, according to a May 12 release.

Mr Suon said Cambodia “wished to develop its rice exports and therefore welcomed not just Kuwait, but all countries who wished to invest in agriculture”.

Although he said Cambodia’s justice system “had room to improve”, he said the country operated within a legal framework to protect its citizens.

The UN was not overly reassured. Its conclusions, released on May 22, noted: “The committee was gravely concerned that since the year 2000, over 100,000 people were evicted in Phnom Penh alone.”

Opposition politicians and non-governmental organisations are concerned that agricultural agreements could follow the same pattern of evictions as deals involving such sectors as property development, forestry and mining.

“Nobody has much information on this deal or many other similar deals that the Cambodian government makes with foreign investors,” said David Pred, Cambodia director of Bridges Across Borders, which is involved in land rights issues. “Very often, affected communities are not made aware that their land has been granted as a concession until the bulldozers turn up.”

Son Chhay, an opposition MP, predicted that the implementation of the agricultural agreements would lead to violence.

“When the time comes, no doubt we will see that the armed forces will be sent to break down houses and shoot people, as they have in the past, to force them off the land,” said Mr Chhay, of the Sam Rainsy Party.

Until September, Mr Chhay chaired the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs and international co-operation, which he said was involved in negotiating deals with Kuwait and Qatar. But even so, he could not obtain copies of documents outlining the agreements. He claimed his deputy chairman, a member of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), went over his head, attending meetings from which he was excluded.

Un Ning, the former deputy chairman, denied he had any information about agreements made between Cambodia and Gulf states. “I haven’t dealt with this affair. I was not involved in talking about this.”

Cheang Vun, who replaced Mr Chhay as head of the commission, said: “I cannot help you with that.”

Long Visalo, a secretary of state for the ministry of foreign affairs and international co-operation, also refused to discuss the agreements. “I have no duty to talk to you,” he said when contacted by phone.

Mr Chhang said a culture of silence has infected Cambodian politics since a 1997 coup led by Hun Sen, the prime minister, which consolidated CPP power and marginalised opposition parties.

This lack of transparency allows ruling elites to enrich themselves by selling off the country’s natural resources, he said.

The government has made some information regarding the dollar value of deals with Gulf states public: Qatar intends to invest US$200 million (Dh734m) “in rice farmland” as well as provide a loan for irrigation systems, according to a speech given last year by Mr Sen.

After returning from an official visit to Kuwait on Jan 16, Cambodia’s minister of foreign affairs, Hor Namhong, told reporters the countries signed a memorandum of understanding, with Kuwait agreeing to finance a $350,000 irrigation project that would cover 130,000 hectares of rice fields.

But the government has not divulged what Kuwait or Qatar will receive in return. Critics say the devil is in the details.

Mr Chhay and others suspect Qatari and Kuwaiti companies will receive land concessions of 99 years (it is illegal foreigners to own land), as other companies have.

Many agree that Cambodia’s agricultural sector needs an overhaul; its rice farmers produce lower yields than their counterparts in neighbouring Vietnam and Thailand. But Mr Chhay said it was up to the government to invest in infrastructure and aggressively seek export markets.

“You don’t need Middle-Eastern countries who have no expertise in rice farming to come here and take land from farmers. It’s ridiculous,” he said.

“There’s potential for this to be a win-win situation,” he added. “Farmers should sell rice to the government and the government should sell rice to Kuwait.”

An April report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute advised developing countries to find investors willing to work with small farmers. In return for such investments as credit and technical assistance, farmers would be contracted to sell their crops to the investor. According to the institute, land agreements similar to those in Cambodia have proliferated globally since the food crises of 2007-2008.

“Details about the status of the deals, the size of land purchased or leased, and the amount invested are still murky,” said the report entitled Land Grabbing by Foreign Investors in Developing Countries.

The institute urged developing countries to encourage foreign investment in agriculture, but to ensure that deals are made transparently and include measures to protect local residents.

The Kuwait Embassy in Bangkok, which covers Cambodia, did not respond to requests for comment.

jferrie@thenational.ae

Food security or economic slavery?

Monday, 01 June 2009
Ogho Okiti
Business Day

In the last edition of The Economist, the magazine reported a new and growing form of foreign agricultural investment. National governments of rich but limited land resources are now undertaking agriculture investment in foreign countries but the produce meant specifically and only for the home country.

For instance, the report mentioned that Saudi Arabia, earlier this year, received the first imported rice of its agriculture investment in Ethiopia. South Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt have made similar investments in Sudan, Africa’s largest country by size. China has joined, making its investments in Congo, just as Kuwait has the same type of arrangement with Zambia and Cambodia.

Though the details of these agriculture investments may differ, the core feature is that national governments are negotiating with national governments of some poor developing countries for hectares of land for agriculture use in exchange for some forms of benefits to the country.

These transactions constitute movement of capital from the rich country to the poor country for the purpose of food production accompanied by improvements in agriculture technology and seedling. The end result is an improvement in yields in places that these have been carried out so far, compared to the average in Africa. As the report rightly claimed, it is a case of “countries that export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare”.

The practice has proved very contentious. Those that support the arrangement do so on the basis that it provides poor countries with new seeds, techniques and money for agriculture. Opponents call it “land grabs”, because the lands are insulated from host countries and argue that poor farmers are pushed off the lands they have farmed for generations.

This growing phenomena raises some serious fundamental issues about the future relationship between rich and poor countries. Though foreign agriculture investment is not new, they have been conducted much the same way as other investments, before now. The present form is initiated at the government level, introducing cross border political dimensions to agriculture investment. Because of the seriousness of food security, this measure will introduce or escalate political instability in the countries in question. Such arrangements give the most visible political interest, rather than solely commercial. Indeed, it is not surprising that, besides Zambia, many of the countries that have accepted such arrangements have some level of political instability. It is a roll call of potential time bombs waiting to explode and that include countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and the arrangement has already consumed a government in Madagascar.

It is disingenuous to see the growing type of foreign investment as another form of outsourcing. In its purest and natural form, outsourcing consists of the “shipment of jobs” abroad to areas that same services can be provided with lower costs, due mainly to improvement in technology. With outsourcing, the host country benefits in terms of improvement in income, knowledge, training and expertise.

This is not the case with this arrangement as the farmers are completely insulated from the local dynamic economy. This arrangement is also peculiar such that all the produce are specifically meant for the home country. Effectively, the international trade process on food is being circumvented. This can only be regarded as the height of neo colonialism because these countries are poor, some of them being fed by the World Food Programme (WFP). These countries have not got enough food, mainly because they cannot muster the capital requirements for improving their food production. A rich country now engages in some kind of cosy arrangement with dubious political leadership to guarantee food for its own people. The least acceptable, is for the home country and the investing country to share the produce.

Another ingredient of neo colonialism in this arrangement is the lack of any form of control by the home nation. The produce, the quantity of the produce, the method, and the destination of the produce are all decided outside the host country. It is also possible that the payments made to host countries are shrouded in secrecy, raising serious questions about taxes, tariffs, and duties and their applicability in such instances. The only benefit I see for now is the domestic jobs in these farms, but it is possible that existing jobs are displayed, anyway. And in the case of China’s investment, the report suggests the workers will be Chinese.

So, these arrangements are reminiscent of “banana republics” when many African countries served as plantations for European countries, but even those did not come with such explicit restrictions and rigidities.

But, what can we learn from this? First, it is the most concrete evidence yet that food security remains a political issue, and should remain a number one political goal. Nations that have no much land will have to use their vast capital to ensure food security, even if it means another neo colonialism. Second, this is mostly in response to the 1997 and 1998 global food shortages that drove up food prices. In the context of these two issues, the response of the federal government is to provide access to N200 billion to commercial farmers. Third, it demonstrates that commercial agriculture value chain remains the best option for African counties such as ours to improve on agriculture produce. And finally, these rich nations realize that any measure of food insecurity is a return of poverty. Effectively, food insecurity is poverty!

Cambodia: If you don't want to buy it, rent it! For info, call Dr. Hun Xen

The Rent-A-Country

Thursday, Mar. 12, 2009
By Krista Mahr
Time Magazine (USA)

"When farmers in food-insecure countries like Laos and Cambodia are scrambling to feed their children, does it make sense to lease out vast tracts to grow rice for foreign governments?"

Take a moment to consider breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Maybe you grabbed a banana or ate a bowl of granola. Whatever it was, chances are that some — if not all — of your morning meal came from a country you don't live in.

Food isolationism is dead. It collapsed in a messy, public heap last year when oil hit $100-plus per bbl. and the world's crush on biofuels pushed food prices to unprecedented highs. Thirty-six nations needed food aid. Twenty-five imposed export bans or restrictions to keep staple crops like rice and wheat at home. As prices shot up 50%, food riots erupted in Haiti, killing at least five, and eventually brought down the government. (Read about Russia's "recession diet".)

And then something else happened. A few diplomats and business leaders quietly boarded their jets and got to work. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and South Korea — well-off states without enough good land or water to feed their people — started to look outside their borders. "It's economically not viable to grow food in the desert," says David Hallam, deputy director of trade and markets for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. "They said, 'If we can't grow our own food, we'll grow it somewhere else.'"

Their words did not fall on deaf ears. In April, diplomatic relations between Cambodia and Qatar were officially established. In May, the Presidents of South Korea and Sudan discussed food cooperation at the launch of the Korea-Arab Society in Seoul. The Saudi Binladin Group penned nonbinding agreements with Indonesia to plant rice on some 1.5 million acres (607,000 hectares) of island paradise, and millions more have reportedly been earmarked, from Pakistan and Kazakhstan to Burma and the Philippines. Alwi Shihab, a special economic adviser on the Middle East to the President of Indonesia, sees this new investment as a boon to the nation's agricultural sector. "We have large, sizable, fertile -land and good water," says Shihab.

Growing crops for strangers, of course, is nothing new. The long, grim march of colonialism was driven by Europe's penchant for sugar, tea, tobacco and other crops that don't flourish in northern climes. But as climate change and growing populations put ever more pressure on the earth, state-backed searches for land and food contracts as part of a national food-security strategy strike many as fundamentally new. "We're talking about a whole different logic," says Renée Vellvé, a researcher for Grain, an organization that has been compiling media reports of these deals. Vellvé's group sees a downside. When farmers in food-insecure countries like Laos and Cambodia are scrambling to feed their children, does it make sense to lease out vast tracts to grow rice for foreign governments? "These are not fallow fields," says Paul Risley, a World Food Program spokesman based in Thailand. "These are villages where families have farmed for centuries."

And for investors, moving into regions where so many depend so fiercely on the land can translate into risk. "You see a backlash," says Rajesh Behal, a principal investment officer for International Finance Corp., which has just put $75 million into an emerging-market agribusiness fund. "People say, 'Who are these people, and how long will they be there?'" In July, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics signed contracts to lease more than 2.2 million acres (900,000 hectares) in Madagascar — more than a third of the island nation's arable land — to grow corn and oil palms. A violent political dispute erupted in the capital soon after, complicating the deal. "Farming is a pretty dirty business," says Behal. "You have to know the nuances and withstand the volatility."

But in countries where governments can't afford — or don't prioritize — significant domestic agricultural investment, foreign money has the power to deliver better roads, irrigation, technology and training. "One thousand times we say yes on private and public agricultural investment, but done in a certain way," says Jean-Philippe Audinet, acting director of the policy division at the U.N.'s International Fund for Agricultural Development. "It's very important not to look negatively at this trend. We have to try to look at the win-win."

After all, is there a choice? Some of these deals are probably doomed to fall under the ax of the global credit crunch, if they haven't already. But for land-poor countries, the underlying problem of relying heavily on imports will remain. Encouraging a new generation of deals to come out of the diplomatic closet may be the best chance we have to make sure that people on both ends of the bargain end up with food on their plate.

—With reporting by Jennifer Veale in Seoul

Cambodia farm land sold to wealthy nations

29 Jan 2009
By Nick Paton Walsh
Channel 4 News (UK)

Countries who are unable to produce enough food for themselves are scouring the world for cheap farmland to grow food and export it home, reports Nick Paton Walsh.

Never mind the food miles: when prices are soaring around the world some countries have found a way of keeping their own consumers happy - farming out their farms overseas.

China, South Korea and many Arab nations can't produce enough food for themselves, but they do have cash and plenty of it.

Now they are scouring the world for cheap farmland to grow their own food and export it home. It's a global trend which has already got the United Nations worried.

Huge plots of land in Africa have been secured and now many rich nations are looking elsewhere for farmland.

One of Asia's poorest countries, Cambodia, is at the top of their wish list.

Cambodia and Kuwait: the start of a great cooperation?

Phnom Penh (Cambodia). 16/01/2009. Hun Sen returning from Kuwait, his first visit in the Middle East. (Photo: Vandy Rattana)

16-01-2009
By Ros Dina
Ka-set in English
Click here to read the article in French
Click here to read the article in Khmer

On Friday January 16th , Cambodian prime Minister Hun Sen and his delegation returned to Phnom Penh in the same way as they left, with a direct flight especially chartered by Kuwait. The prime Minister's first ever and “very friendly” visit in Kuwait lasted four days in all, during which the head of government and some of his Ministers signed several agreements with the Arab emirate, their new partner. Hun Sen expressed his wish for the opening “soon” of an embassy of Kuwait in Cambodia. The new cooperation seems to be going all smoothly.

Upon their arrival at Pochentong airport, Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong indicated to the press that the two countries had reached an agreement on direct flights between Cambodia and Kuwait and intended to promote tourism between both countries. They also signed two Memoranda of Understanding, one concerning the sending of Cambodian labour to Kuwait and the other about the setting-up of irrigation infrastructures in the province of Kampong Thom, a project worth $USD350 million which would apply to 130,000ha of ricefields. Among other things, Kuwait promised to finance the renovation of two road sections in the Northeast of Cambodia, namely the Thmor Kol-Sampov Loun section and the Kôn Domrei-Pailin section. These projects, according to Hor Namhong, will not be launched without the final assent of Kuwait's direction committee.

In August 2008, a delegation from Kuwait visited Cambodia and since then, Hun Sen has invited the country to send more delegations. He also sought the help of the Kuwaiti Fund for Development, this time for support to small irrigation networks in the country “to help farmers and reduce poverty”. The prime Minister suggested that the money might either be transferred to private micro-finance structures or to the Rural Development Bank, which belongs to the state.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs reported that Hun Sen encouraged Kuwaiti investors to take an interest in Cambodia, a land admittedly agricultural, but full of resources, he claimed. He offered them, as they have started doing, to buy rice to feed their country, but also to establish stocks with a view to sell them in turn to other countries in the Near East, forced to import, like Kuwait, the majority of their agricultural and farming products. A Working group should soon be set up to tackle investment questions raised by both countries.

As for tourism, Cambodia expects a lot from Kuwait. The Cambodian Minister of Tourism Thong Khon, who was also accompanying the prime Minister, is in charge of creating a programme of cultural events including exhibitions and fairs promoting key-products in Cambodia, which would then be organised in Kuwait. Together with the Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce, Industry and Parliamentary relations, he signed a 5-year convention which will require, as a condition, the launching of projects within the first six months of its implementation.

The Minister of Tourism insisted on the interest there was in attracting to Cambodia tourists from a small country but where the GDP per capita amounts to USD50,000... (GDP per capita in Cambodia: USD1,800). “In 2008, we only welcomed some 700 Kuwaiti tourists in Cambodia. But if we could welcome 50,000, that would be good!”

Kuwait PM holds official talks with Cambodian counterpart

KUWAIT, Jan 13 (KUNA) -- His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah on Tuesday held official talks in Bayan Palace with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen.

Attending the discussions was First Deputy Premier and Defence Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, Deputy Premier, Foreign Minister and acting Oil Minister Sheikh Dr. Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, Deputy Premier and State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Faisal Mohammad Al-Hajji Bukhadhour, Advisor to HH the Prime Minister's Diwan and Head of the honorary delegation Sheikh Dr. Salem Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah and the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Thailand and non-resident Ambassador to Cambodia.

Other guests included sheikhs, dignitaries and officials from Kuwait's Foreign Ministry, the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

The discussions focused on various forms of cooperation as well as bilateral relations between the two countries and international issues of joint importance, according to a Kuwaiti official.

The talks also resulted in the signature of two agreements and two memorandums of understanding.

A memorandum of understanding was signed by Kuwaiti Deputy Premier, Foreign Minister and acting Oil Minister Sheikh Dr. Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah for the KFAED and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong.

An agreement for cooperation in tourism was signed by the governments of both countries; on the Kuwaiti side by Minister of Commerce and Industry and Minister of State for National Assembly Affairs Ahmad Baqer and on the Cambodian side by Minister of Tourism Thong Khon.

A memorandum of understanding in the field of the exchange of labour was signed on the Kuwaiti side by Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Bader Fahad Al-Duwaila and Cambodian Minister of Labour of Vocational Training Vorng Soth.

Another agreement for the organization of aviation services between both countries was signed on the Kuwaiti side by Head of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation Fawaz Al-Farah and on the Cambodian side by Secretary of State for Civil Aviation Mao HasVannal.

HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah also held a dinner banquet at the honour of the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his accompanying delegation.

Cambodian PM Leaves for Kuwait Visit

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 January 2009

Prime Minister Hun Sen left Tuesday for a first-ever visit to Kuwait, in an effort to boost economic relations between the two countries.

Hun Sen flew Tuesday on a plane provided by the Middle Eastern nation and is scheduled to pay a four-day visit, accompanied by a delegation of 40 government officials and businessmen.

Cambodian officials are scheduled to sign agreements on Kuwaiti technical aid to construct irrigation systems and a hydropower project in Kampong Thom province, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, who is also on the delegation, told reporters Tuesday before departing.

Officials will sign agreements on direct flights and road construction on some areas in the northwest of Cambodia, Hor Namhong said.

The delegation will also discuss trade, exchange, investment and rice, he said.

“We will exchange views about rice,” he said. “This year we have remaining 3 million tons of rice for export, so we could export to sell it in Kuwait and other countries in the Persian Gulf.”

Tourism Minister Thong Korn said he believed more tourists from the Middle East would be coming to Cambodia.

In 2008, about 2 percent of visitors to the kingdom come from the Middle East. Less than 1 percent came from Kuwait, he said.

The prime minister’s trip follows an August 2008 visit by Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmed al-Sabah. During that visit Kuwait pledged nearly $550 million in agricultural loans in exchange for food security.

Hun Sen visiting Kuwait for more begging?

Cambodian PM makes first Midle East visit

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has departed for oil-rich Kuwait in his first-ever visit to the Middle East, aimed at expanding business and trade ties.

Hun Sen was accompanied by a number of high-ranking government officials and business people as he left on the four-day trip on a plane provided by Kuwait.

"This visit will lead to the development in the future between Cambodia and Kuwait, and between Cambodia and other countries in the Middle East," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters.

During the visit, officials are scheduled to sign agreements on Kuwaiti technical aid to build a hydro-power plant, irrigation systems and roads in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation, the minister said.

Officials will also agree to direct flights between the two nations to boost tourism, he said.

Hor Namhong, who is accompanying Hun Sen, said the premier would also hold discussions about rice, trade exchange and investments.

Kuwaiti premier Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmed al-Sabah visited Cambodia and inked trade deals last August, while Phnom Penh is also looking into land-lease agreements with Kuwait.

Kuwait granted Cambodia a 546-million-dollar agricultural loan in August in return for crop production.

Impoverished Cambodia has climbed back from decades of civil unrest to emerge as one of the region's most vibrant economies, attracting increasing foreign investment.

Cambodian officials have also said they hope Middle East governments will help train local experts on the petroleum industry, which is starting to take root after the discovery of offshore deposits.

Cambodian premier to visit Middle East soon [to sell more Cambodian agricultural lands?]

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen will start his maiden visit to the Middle East region soon, Information Minister and government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said here on Sunday.

The premier will visit Qatar, Kuwait and other countries in the region after Jan. 10 in order to strengthen the kingdom's ties with them, he added.

In April 2008, while Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, visited Cambodia, the two countries signed an agreement to establish their diplomatic relationship.

During the premier's visit, Qatar also agreed with Cambodia's requests to help train oil and gas experts, allow Cambodian labor force to work in Qatar, bring in more investments, start direct flight from Doha of Qatar to Cambodia, strengthen cooperation in the fields of gas production and mine clearance, and export of rice products from Cambodia to Qatar.

In August 2008, while Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah visited Cambodia, both countries signed five cooperation agreements in the fields of economy, trade, investment, foreign affairs and civil aviation.

Under the agreements, Kuwait will help Cambodia develop human resources for oil and gas exploration, provide concession loans with low interest rate for Cambodia to build rural infrastructures, water irrigation system and roads, as well as to invest in the agricultural sector of Cambodia and buy agricultural products from the kingdom.

Cambodia: Oil-rich Kuwait in August granted a 546-million-dollar loan in return for crop production

Global trends driving 'land grab' in poor nations: activists

Sunday, January 04, 2009

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a "land grab" that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.

Global trends including high prices for oil and commodities, the biofuels boom, and now the sweeping downturn, are spurring import-reliant countries to take action to protect their sources of food.

China and South Korea, which are both short on arable land, and Middle Eastern nations flush with petrodollars, are driving the trend to sign up rights to swathes of territory in Asia and Africa.

"Today's food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab," the Spain-based agricultural rights group Grain said in a recent report.

It said that some deals were targeted at boosting food security by producing crops that would be sent back home for consumption, while others were to establish money-making plantations like palm oil and rubber.

"As a result of both trends, fertile agricultural land is being swiftly privatised and consolidated by foreign companies in some ofthe world's poorest and hungriest countries," it said.

In one of the biggest deals, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics said in November it would invest about 6.0 billion dollars to develop 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Madagascar -- almost half the size of Belgium.

Daewoo plans to produce four million tonnes of corn and 500,000 tonnes of palm oil a year, most of which will be shipped out of impoverished Madagascar -- where the World Food Programme still provides food relief.

"We will build everything from ports and railways to markets on a barren and untouched area," said Shin Dong-Hyun, general manager of the WFP's financing and strategic planning department.

Although commodity prices have fallen from their highs earlier this year, resource-poor and heavily populated countries are still concerned about securing long-term supplies.

Walden Bello, from Bangkok-based advocacy group Focus on the Global South, said the looming global recession is not likely to halt the trend which he fears will worsen the lot of landless peasants.

"In a situation where global agricultural production has become so volatile and unpredictable, I would not be surprised if the Middle Eastern countries that are engaged in this would continue to push on," he told AFP.

Bello said that many of the deals were struck in dysfunctional and corruption-ridden nations, and rejected claims the land being signed away is of poor quality, and that the projects will bring jobs and improve infrastructure.

"What we're talking about is private parties using state contracts to enrich themselves," he said. "It's an intersection of corrupt governments and land-hungry nations."

In Cambodia, where the WFP also supplies aid, oil-rich Kuwait in August granted a 546-million-dollar loan in return for crop production.

Undersecretary of State Suos Yara said Cambodia was also in talks with Qatar, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia over agricultural investments including land concessions.

"If we do this work successfully, we can get at least 3.0 billion dollars from these agricultural investments," he said.

"With the (global financial) crisis, this is a chance for Cambodia to look to the future by pushing agriculture in order to attract foreign investments."

But opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said he was suspicious about why a wealthy nation like Kuwait needed to lease land to grow rice rather then just import the grain.

"Cambodian farmers need the land," he said, urging the government to limit the area under lease and ensure Cambodia was not plundered by foreign nations.

In the Philippines, another land lease hotspot, a series of high-profile deals has clashed with long-running demands for agrarian reform including land redistribution.

"It will aggravate the problem of landlessness, the insufficiency of land for Filipino peasants," said Congressman Rafael Mariano, who also heads the Peasants' Movement of the Philippines (KMP).

However the Philippine government is undeterred and during President Gloria Arroyo's visit to Qatar in December, officials opened talks over the lease of at least 100,000 hectares of agricultural land to the emirate.

Bello said he expected these sorts of deals to increase, forcing peasants from rural areas and into cities where together with the global downturn they will add to the ranks of the unemployed.

"It's particularly explosive in those countries where you have a high degree of landlessness, like the Philippines where seven out of 10 rural people do not have access to land," he said.

In the impoverished and corrupt dictatorship of Laos, some experts estimate that between two million and three million hectares have been parcelled off in a rampant and uncontrolled process that has now been suspended by the government.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has sounded alarm over the loss of land in a country where in rural areas, every second child is malnourished and access to land for foraging of natural resources is critical.

"If the environment is changed, with the trees cut and replaced with industrial crops," said FAO representative in Laos, Serge Verniau, "they can face serious danger".

Cambodia: Langrabbing and hybrid rice

21 November 2008
Grain.org (Spain)

Cambodia is a major target of the global landgrabbing surge that began in March this year when the world food crisis was at its peak. High-ranking foreign delegations have regularly been visiting Phnom Penh, looking to strike deals for access to land to produce food for export back to their countries. Overall, as much as $3 billion in agricultural investments are currently being negotiated with the Cambodian government in return for millions of hectares in land concessions. The largest deal so far is a bilateral deal with Kuwait involving a $546 million loan in exchange for a 70-90 year lease covering a "large area" of rice lands, where Kuwait will organise production for export back home. Meanwhile, over 100,000 Cambodian families lack food and many more are directly at risk from the escalating government-backed land evictions happening across the country.

As documented by GRAIN in an October 2008 briefing, Seized: The 2008 land grab for food and financial security, such land grab investments in Cambodia and elsewhere may be negotiated by governments, but it is the private sector that is explicitly expected to step in and deliver-- taking control of the production and distribution. This kind of agricultural investment is really all about agribusiness development-- from the seed to the market, and it is only natural then that the projects involving rice often involve hybrid rice seeds.

As Cambodian rice farmers are dispalced from their lands to make way for export production, so too their traditional rice seeds will be displaced by imported hybrids. This was confirmed this past week when national media in Cambodia reported that a Cambodia-based joint venture hybrid rice company was in negotiations with foreign investors from the Middle East and Singapore to grow its hybrid rice on 50,000 hectares in the central province of Kampong Thom.

The hybrid rice company, Kasekor Khmer Rongroeung Co Ltd, is a partnership between Singapore-based Sunland Agritech, a well-known player on the hybrid rice scene with tie-ups in Malaysia and the Philippines, and Malaynesia Resources, a Singapore-based company providing consultancy services to foreigners investing in Southeast Asia. The company currently only operates a 2-hectare test plot but it plans to increase its seed production area in the province to 200 hectares in the next growing season.

This past season the company distributed seeds and fertiliser to farmers free of charge in return for a share of the crop - a strategy it plans to expand upon. At present, the provincial governor estimates that Kasekor Khmer Rongroeung' s hybrid rice is grown on around 5,000 hectares in the province.

"We are ready for large-scale implementation," said Louis Kek, director of Malaynesia Resources.

Kek told the Cambodia Daily that their hybrid seeds will triple rice yields in the province, from 2.5 tonnes per hectare to 7- 8 tonnes per hectare. But similar promises were also made by this company in Malaysia, where high yields have not materialised. In trials conducted by the Malaysian Agriculture and Research Development Institute (MARDI), the hybrid rice of SunLand's Malaysian joint venture, RB Biotech, was devastated by panicle blast and, even when not exposed to disease, its yield was still considerably below that of the check variety.

The main appeal of hybrid rice for private investors, however, is not its performance but the control it offers over farming. Farmers who plant hybrid rice have to return to the company every year to buy new seed, so it is ideal for locking them into contract production. Hybrid rice is also best suited to the kind of large-scale, high-tech, plantation-style agriculture that the foreign investors moving in on Cambodia's rice lands are likely interested in pursuing. Landgrabbing and hybrid rice are indeed a perfect match.