I've been thinking along the same lines as your OGEC column for some time. I believe that any country that is not self-sufficient in food production in the future is going to be screwed. The oil producers and China will most likely try to buy up farmland in other countries for their own purposes but it would be relatively easy to nationalize such land if food shortages occurred.

China farming the world to feed its economy Critics cite strong-arm tactics forcing neighboring nations to grow crops

As Beijing scrambles to feed its galloping economy, it has already scoured the world for mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese enterprises are snapping up vast tracts of land abroad and forging contract farming deals.

But some Laotian farmers are losing their ancestral lands or being forced to become wage workers on what were once their fields. Chinese companies are accused of getting rubber concessions from officials and not compensating farmers. They are also accused of violating laws, human rights and the environment, under conditions described by experts as "anarchic."

"The Chinese companies in the north are a bunch of thugs," says Charles Alton, a consultant in agronomy for international agencies in Laos. However, Alton says, the "unpoliced, unregulated situation" in northern Laos is ripe for exploitation.

From Southeast Asia to Africa, the Chinese are farming oil palm, eucalyptus, teak, corn, cassava, sugar cane, rubber and other crops. As in Laos, the industrial-size farms are variously viewed as an ecological nightmare or a big step toward slashing poverty.

In Congo, a Chinese telecommunications giant, ZTE International, has bought more than 7 million acres of forest to plant oil palms. In Zimbabwe, state-owned China International Water and Electric Corp. reportedly received rights from the government to farm 250,000 acres of corn in the south.

In Myanmar, rubber concessions have gone to at least two Chinese companies, Ho Nan Ching and Yunnan Hongyu. Refugees fleeing Myanmar’s military regime say troops are forcibly evicting farmers to make way for rubber plantations, including some run by Chinese enterprises.

A Chinese-Cambodian joint venture, Pheapimex-Wuzhishan, converted land of the Phong tribal people into a tree plantation 20 times larger than allowed by law in Cambodia, according to the environmental group Global Witness. The group says the concession in Mondulkiri province encroached on grazing grounds, destroyed sacred sites and used toxic herbicides.

Oh, and if you meet resistance, then just like in China, threaten deadly force. For as Mao famously said, "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun:"

The study found that when the China-Lao Ruifeng Rubber Company moved in, the frontier village of Changee lost most of its rice fields and grazing land and its burial grounds were desecrated. The pleas of villagers got no result and some protesters were reportedly held at gunpoint, with the Chinese using coercion through local authorities.

"They see what is in China, where people have gone from wooden houses to concrete, walking or bikes to motorbikes and cars, buffaloes to hand tractors and kerosene to electricity," says Michael Dwyer, a natural resources researcher from the University of California, Berkeley. "They want the same."

This story is even more puzzling. It's about the Philippines leasing 1 million hectares agricultural land (out of total 10 million) for food production. The idiocy of these stories is it creates a conflict of interest between the investor, China, and the host countries for the supply of food grown on their own soil...

In my mind the conflict is severe because if there is no food shortage the huge industrialized farm operates at extreme efficiency and floods the market to cover operating costs hence lowering prices for all farmers, therefore undercutting home production farming by pushing out small inefficient farmers. Until there is a shortage, at which point they start shipping food to where it pays or where it is needed by those who control the investment, magnifying any impact on both ends. Simply wonderful (sarcasm).

China's Appetite for Filipino Paddies Breeds Farmer Opposition

Twenty years ago, Juan Diego fought wealthy Philippine landowners and the government for the rights to a one-hectare (2.5-acre) rice paddy north of Manila. Now he's worried the Chinese may take his farm.

Chinese companies last year agreed to lease 1.2 million hectares in the Philippines to grow rice, corn and sugar. While President Gloria Arroyo says the $5 billion deal will help increase food production for Filipinos, local farmers and lawmakers have stalled the deal.

"The government and the Chinese call it a partnership, but it only means the Chinese will be our landlords and we will be the slaves," said Diego, 80, who farms in Guimba, 205 kilometers (127 miles) from the capital, with his daughter and four sons.

The groundswell forced Arroyo to suspend the contracts in September. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the government would consult with farmers before reinstating them.

One draft agreement, filed with the lawsuit, said the state would identify 1 million hectares of public land for use by Jilin Fuhua Agricultural Science and Technology Development Co. A second accord was signed with Beidahuang Group.

The land may come from the 5 million hectares the government distributed to landless farmers beginning in 1988, said Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Gerundio Madueno.

The motivation is well-known: China is losing farmland to desertification in the north and to urban development along the coast:

China is looking for foreign farms because the nation can't feed its 1.3 billion people. The country lost an average of 1.23 million hectares of farmland annually during the 2000-2005 five-year plan, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported last April.

China's economy has grown at least 6 percent annually since 1997. Urban incomes are triple those in rural areas, so farmers are selling their land to developers.

"We're having less and less cultivated land," Liang said. "More farmers want to live in the city.''

China is expected to grow 129.5 million metric tons of rice in the year ending Sept. 30, compared with a record 140.5 million tons 10 years earlier, the USDA said. Corn production should rise to 145 million metric tons, from 104.3 million a decade earlier. Yet the current harvest would be 3 million tons less than demand.

Food prices surged 18 percent in January, pushing inflation to 7.1 percent, the highest in more than 11 years.

"Rising food prices could potentially destabilize the populace, given that 28 percent of China's disposable income goes toward food compared to just 10 percent in the U.S.," Credit Suisse analysts said in November.

The world is turning to dust, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says.

One-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one percent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 36,000 square miles to desert — an area the size of Indiana — since the 1950s.

"The lack of water and the overuse of water, that is going to be a threat to the United States," Thomas said. "In other parts of the world, the problem is poverty that causes people to overuse the land. Most of these ecological systems have tipping points, and once you go past them, things go downhill."

And what would China do then if its own populace was restive due to skyrocketing food costs and/or shortages? Attempt a military "solution" by threatening the Philippines? The irony would be thick enough to cut with a knife: a Communist regime attacking a democracy which had just nationalized the Imperialist Communist's appropriated farmland.

Maybe every country seeking to lock in overseas "Empires of Grain" might be better served by focusing their attention and capital on their own country's horrendously destructive and ill-conceived agricultural and development policies and practices.

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