COMMENT Cornfields are not very mobile: they cannot be extracted from the south of Brazil and replanted in the Arabian desert. A crop of plans by food-poor nations to buy agricultural land abroad should not, therefore, cause a backlash because of fears that foreigners will steal all of the food, as long as host countries retain the sovereignty to govern that land with whatever laws, taxes and regulations they chose.
China, where self-sufficiency in food is coming under pressure as a richer population consumes more meat, is considering whether to make support for offshore land acquisition, in places such as Africa and South America, an official government policy. A private-equity group in the United Arab Emirates is buying land in Pakistan with government support, while other resource-rich but food-poor nations – oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Libya – are looking abroad to secure their food supplies.
