I came across a news article about a project that just dazzled me. What can a country do that has little land but a lot of mouths to feed? Right, you can import! But what do you do as a logistics company when your turnover is decreasing because commodity prices are rising? Exactly: You lease your own land and grow and ship the crops yourself!

This is exactly what Korean based Daewoo Logistics announced today, they are leasing a part of Madagascar (yes the country) – about half the size of Belgium for 99 years, to grow food crops for populated Seoul. The scale of these projects are immense and are a stunning development in globalization.

“Shin Dong-hyun, a senior manager at Daewoo Logistics in Seoul, said the company would develop the arable land for farming over the next 15 years, using labour from South Africa, and intended to replace about half South Korea’s maize imports.”

What will this development mean? The prime minister of Ethiopia already declared that they are very eager to provide the middle Eastern countries for development.

Talking about globalization; With China as the factory of the world, will Africa become our world’s farmland? I discussed this with a friend a year ago, with the ongoing monopolization around the world, we imagined Africa to be the holiday location of future times, i’m not sure what this development would mean – it’s to early to make conlcusions about that. But its certainly interesting.

From Financial times, Land leased to secure crops for South Korea. Article tip by Stanly Sakai.

I hope you like that post!

Tags: agriculture, globalization, Korea