Pakistan, already a key source of labor for the Gulf, has been among the most active. The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, has warned that foreign land acquisition and long-term leasing schemes, if done poorly, risk "creating a neocolonial pact" and "unacceptable work conditions for agricultural workers."Įven so, some countries are seeking out investment. The Gulf gains food security, while poorer developing countries benefit from added jobs and improved technology. "People riot when they don't get food."Įxperts say the agriculture investments could be a win-win situation. "These are countries that come with a lot of political baggage," said Eckart Woertz, program manager for economics at the Gulf Research Center, which estimates the Gulf's conventional water resources will be gone within three decades. The idea of shipping off homegrown crops to feed rich foreigners could stir dissent. That may be because many of the deals are being hatched in volatile countries, such as Pakistan and Sudan, that have serious domestic food concerns of their own. Of those companies that could be reached for comment, none made officials available to discuss their investments in detail. Most such talks are continuing in private. Under the proposed project, the company would produce basmati rice in Sulawesi, Papua and western Java. The Saudi Binladin Group, for example, is considering investing more than $4 billion to grow food in Indonesia, said Salim Segaf al-Jufri, the Indonesian ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Plans are also accelerating in the private sector. Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, visited Kazakhstan in central Asia, where agricultural investments were on the agenda.ĭubai World, a sprawling conglomerate controlled by that emirate's government, last month said it was creating a new subsidiary targeting global investments in a wide range of commodities, including food. The prime ministers of Qatar and Kuwait traveled separately to Cambodia this year to discuss securing paddy land for rice-growing. And where once the region was content to spend its petrodollars on food sold on the open market, Gulf nations now are quietly scouring the globe for rich farmland to rent or buy outright. That stark reality, and rising food prices, is sending the region's leaders scrambling to lock up even more long-term food supplies abroad. Lush urban landscaping and ambitious agricultural projects here and in Saudi Arabia, which once spent so much on farm subsidies that it exported surplus wheat, are quickly draining aquifers, including some that are millennia old and cannot be refilled. There are simply too many mouths to feed and not enough water.
It is that realization that is persuading wealthy Gulf Arabs to look far beyond their shores for more fertile acreage - tens of thousands of hectares, in some cases.
Yet even high-tech establishments like the Mirak Agricultural Services farms here and elsewhere in this riverless country will never feed the region's rapidly growing population. Lilies and roses bud nearby, and strawberries are on their way, all thanks to sophisticated water-saving irrigation. Row upon row of bell peppers grow plump in a temperature-controlled greenhouse. NAHEL, United Arab Emirates: In the dunes around this sun-scorched desert village, where camels still plod along dusty roads an hour south of Dubai's skyscrapers, farmers are making the wasteland bloom. New on Gulf's shopping list: Foreigners' farmland
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