Land grabbing in Ethiopia

Have you ever heard of land grabbing? Well, if not, you can read all about it  in my feature in this week`s German weekly Freitag, which means, you will have to read the text in German. You can find it at page 9.

Last August, I visited Ethiopia, which seems to be the world-wide centre of land grabbing. Mainly Asian companies, for instance from India, South Korea and Saoudi Arabia are buying up huge pieces of land for really small sums, in order to ´develop´ these lands for soy-, rice-, palmoil-, or seed production, usually mainly for export. The local population often has very few benefits of this land grabbing.

In a remote western part of Ethiopia, I talked to the Indian multinational Karuturi PLC from Bangalore, which is developing a huge rice farm over there - but the company has its fair share of problems, because the local cattle herdsmen are against the Indian company. Well, you can read about it yourself....