France Presse - June 21 2010
AgroGeneration company, headed by Charles Beigbeder - main shareholder, announced on Monday the purchase of 25,000 ha more in Ukraine. They now run a total of 45,000 ha in this country.
Via: http://farmlandgrab.org/13830
Posted: 24 June 2010 under Ukraine.
Comments: none
Companies have a “good opportunity to make money” building the infrastructure needed to feed a world population growing by some 100m people a year, a top executive at oilseeds giant Bunge has said.
While the need to raise crop production by 1.7bn tonnes in the first half of the century to feed the growing population had been appreciated, the problems of transporting and storing the extra had been largely ignored, Carl Hausmann said.
“The infrastructure needs of the world have been underinvested in over the last several year,” said Mr Hausmann, the former chief executive of Bunge in Europe and North America, now head of the agribusiness giant’s corporate affairs.
“But if farmers do not get more facilities to store, deliver crops, they cannot increase their production. Infrastructure is a linchpin of the entire agricultural system.”
Public vs private sectors
Developing the transport facilities and silos needed to meet this demand looked likely to come down to private companies, given the squeezes on public sector finances.
“Most will be done by the private sector,” he said. “Private companies will see this as an opportunity to invest and make money.”
Bunge was exploiting this opportunity through a $200m export facility it was building on the US west coast.
“Think how many more such projects we will need in the coming decade to cope with 1.7bn tonnes in [extra] production,” he added, saying that the world had “five-to-10 years” before the jump in volumes really hit home in terms of logistical needs.
Environmental battles
While infrastructure shortfalls were particularly acute in developing countries, with 70% of Africa’s farmers living more than a 30-minute walk from an all-weather road, they were common in Western countries too.
“Even in nations like the US, things are in bad shape,” Mr Hausmann said noting that Bunge’s new export silo is the country’s first for 25 years.
Companies would be “happy” to invest in new infrastructure “as long as the [government] policies are healthy”.
In many cases, this would mean finding ways to improve relations with lobbies, such as environmental groups, who were holding up the development of many facilties.
“Many investors are not ready to see [manager] in the crosshairs,” Mr Hausmann said.
Via: http://www.agrimoney.com/news/silos-and-transport-offer-good-scope-for-profits–1891.html
Posted: 24 June 2010 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide, Romania.
Comments: none
By Lucy Knight
FARMERS are in need of a pay rise if they’re to be expected to keep producing food for the world, a parliamentary hearing in Canberra was told last week.
Science writer and former head of CSIRO media, Professor Julian Cribb, told a Senate Inquiry on food production last week that major investments in farmers were needed to make it worth their while getting out of bed each day.
What’s happening instead, he said, is increasing competition for cheap food supplies by major supermarket chains the world “closing down” or “destroying” local industries and driving more and more people out of agriculture.
Professor Cribb has recently launched a new book, The Coming Famine, where he speaks of the global food challenge and what efforts are needed to avoid it, including an entire chapter on securing a ‘fair deal for farmers’.
He told the hearing the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation last year revealed investments in the order of $80 billion a year in agriculture were needed to help meet these needs.
Professor Cribb said the FAO saw there was currently no incentive for farmers or scientists to invest in agriculture at the moment as “the returns are so poor”.
“Today we have the effect of global competition between large food and supermarket companies driving down the price in any country you care to name around the world as they seek to source cheaper and cheaper produce,” Professor Cribb said.
“This is having the effect of disrupting and even destroying entire local industries.
“We are seeing is happening to Australia: the dairy industry, the fruit and vegetable industry and so on. They are under and an awful lot of pressure by this globalisation of prices.
“I argue this is a one-way street. If you keep on doing that you will drive more people out of agriculture, you will throw away our lot of otherwise viable agricultural industries, you will definitely mine the soil and water resource much worse than it is being mined at the moment and basically you will undermine global food security.
“My conclusion from that is that farmers worldwide have to have a pay rise or they are not going to make the investments that are necessary to sustain global food production.”
Professor Cribb argued that price rise could take a number of forms.
“Most people get fair pay these days, whether they are politicians or journalists or actors or nurses or doctors. Farmers don’t. Farmers cop it both ways.
“They are confronted on the one hand by muscular companies selling them inputs at very high-cut prices and on the other hand by muscular companies offering to pay them very low prices for their output.
“Only a tiny smidgen of highly efficient producers can survive in that world. The logic of that, if we want global food security, is that it has to stop.”
Professor Cribb said it was important the “right signal” was sent to farmers to continue investing in agriculture, and for young farmers so they don’t leave the sector altogether.
Posted: 21 June 2010 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide.
Comments: none