Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of ‘neo-colonialism’, with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people. Rising food prices have already set off a second ‘scramble for Africa’. This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports. ‘These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government,’ said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange […]