

Land deals in Africa and Asia: Cornering foreign fields - Anon84
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13697274

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potatolicious
Very interesting article - and we can see the effects of this sort of land
ownership historically, particularly with regards to American multi-national
agriculture giants.

From what I know of the situation, the effects of these massive land buy-outs
are rarely positive. Yes, it generates employment locally, but it creates a
trade deficit for the host country like you would not believe, and drives
everyone into poverty in the long run. Not to mention that many of these
countries are starving, and instead of using the land to grow food crops and
feed the people, they're exporting bananas and pineapples, and re-importing
staple foods that they're not growing themselves at high prices.

This behaviour has led to revolutions in the past - and we know that the
ousting of the socialist Salvadore Allende in Chile (by the CIA, no less) was
fueled largely due to American corporate objections over nationalization of
farmlands. And then he was replaced by Pinochet - a story we would be better
off not repeating.

Whatever the benefits of this sort of deal, I'm fairly certain the farmers at
on the fields are not seeing it. Massive land buy-outs like these benefit only
the gilded upper classes of these poor countries.

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seldo
This reminds me of the Transnationals described in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red-
Green-Blue Mars trilogy (which won an award for its realistic portrayal of
economics). Basically, the multinationals found small countries with a GDP
much smaller than their own profits and bought the whole country: land,
infrastructure, and government. Then they refashioned the laws of that country
through corruption and bribery to fit themselves and began operating at a
level parallel to the governments of other countries, rather than being
subject to their laws.

In this case, the governments of Saudi Arabia, China, etc., worried that the
countries that supply them with raw materials will pass laws restricting
exports, are buying massive portions of the production capacity of these
exporting countries to essentially make it impossible for these countries to
sell goods to anybody else. It's simultaneously a clever and sinister form of
neo-colonialism.

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3pt14159
I'd buy land in these countries if I had an army backing my land claim. In
general, I have a strong dislike for national investments like these. If the
only difference between me and China is that I can't trust their
courts/government and China can, due to China's large stock piles of guns,
then it presents an unfair (and illiquid) market place.

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patrickg-zill
Read up on Benetton in Argentina also.

