February 3, 2009 (LPAC)– Whereas nations lacking sufficient farmland might have a legitimate interest in developing agriculture elsewhere, things stand differently for private players such as George Soros and hedge funds. The latter are getting hold of vast territories of Kazakhstan, Sudan, Uganda, Indonesia, Madagascar, and even of starving Ethiopia, since most of these countries are hopelessly bankrupt and eager to get cash, wrote France’s Nouvel Observateur weekly of Dec. 23, 2008. The “farmland rush” taking place on a world scale was denounced by FAO’s Director General Jacques Diouf as “agrarian neo-colonialism.”
Nouvel Observateur noted that George Soros’s former business partner and co-founder of Soros’s Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, is encouraging investors to go for this land-grab policy. “George Soros is heavily implicated in bio-fuels and owns land in Argentina. But in the last couple of months, with the financial crash, it’s the rush. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have massively invested in Chinese meat farms. Morgan Stanley bought 40,000 hectares in Ukraine, nothing compared to the 300,000 ha bought by Renaissance Capital, a Russian hedge fund.”
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