Korea’s Daewoo Leases an Area Half of the Size of Belgium in Madagascar for Free
According to a few under-the-radar reports, Korea’s industrial conglomerate Daewoo has just completed a deal with Madagascar for a 99 year lease of an area half the size of Belgium (about 1.3 million hectares). While complete terms of the lease are not yet available, the total price is: NOTHING.
The initial plan is to plant maize and palm oil for export to South Korea. The benefit to Madagascar of losing a little over half of their arable land would be the anticipated employment opportunities for farmers and other locals.
According to a Daewoo spokesperson:
We want to plant corn there to ensure our food security. Food can be a weapon in this world,” said Hong Jong-wan, a manager at Daewoo. “We can either export the harvests to other countries or ship them back to Korea in case of a food crisis.
Other officials have of course claimed that while there would be no upfront payment, Daewoo would be investing significantly in infrastructure such as roads, grain storage and irrigation.
Daewoo plans to begin maize production on 2,000 hectares next year and over time will expand production across the leased land. Most of the maize production would of course be shipped back to South Korea, and it seems that very little of the maize production would remain in Madagascar.
This agreement, whereby Malagasy food is grown and shipped across the ocean to another country might be viewed as fairly counter-intuitive, considering that 70% of Madagascar’s population lives below the poverty line, chronic food insecurity faces more than 65% of the population and more than 50% of children under 3 suffer retarded growth due to poor nutrition.
Image Credit: Wharman at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
This is interesting, but may I suggest care in the journalistic faux pas of using terms like “of course”, which turn an informational article into a biased opinion. A little more research on this article may have produced a fuller content. I wonder if the crops planted are earmarked more for fuel than food production. It is, indeed, very important that the well being of the peoples and their environment be a major consideration of any project which utilizes an area’s resources. A link to Daewoo International would be a good idea here so that people could ask questions and register their concerns with the company. When written with respect and intelligence companies do consider them. Daewoo is a very large corporation, mostly dealing in cars, shipbuilding and marine engineering. The company has had its ups and downs over the past years. It has invested in a number of projects in Europe and America, including a 2007 $3.7 billion R&D partnership with General Motors in the U.S. A chance to be a partner in more environmentally responsible projects is a hot idea right now. Daewoo’s fortunes could improve if encouraged to do it right. The bottom line of course is financial public investment. Increasingly, environmentally responsible companies are seeing an increase in investment currencies coming their way.
SM,
Thanks for your constructive comments (link to Daewoo was an oversight, change made, thanks muchly).
Unfortunately, when I was writing this article, I didn’t really have any more information than what I posted and linked to: if any other readers have heard anything else, please do post them in the comments!
Food crisis lies! The only reason the capitalist koreans have done this is to grow corn to then sell for ethenol..In korea today the idiots are converting their lush farmland into factories and apartments as fast as they can rape the land..This is all a dirty lie..