The soil at the site has an astounding 5% organic carbon content, so you won’t need to add any fertilisers.
There is a river nearby so irrigation will not be a problem.
Labour is abundant and super cheap.
All of this is available for less than Rs.1/acre/year for a 50-year lease.
In addition, the government will give you tax breaks and build roads for free.
Sounds too good to be true? It is 100% true except that the land in question is in Ethiopia and you need to be a big ticket investor .
There’s a huge land-grab going on in the country at present. Companies from all over the world are coming but Indian companies are the biggest investors. The poor nation is seeking investment at throwaway prices.
The price quoted above is what Bangalore based Karuturi Global paid for 2500 sq. km or over 6 Lakh Acre land in Gambella province, according to an article in Guardian last year.
Read all about it (video included)
guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma … mland-rush
The other side of the story is that thousands of acres of forests are being cleared and local population is getting displaced to clear the land for farming. This is naturally brewing resentment among the locals.
Moreover the prospect of global warming means there are going to be increasing floods, droughts and heat waves. Already Karuturi Global’s first corn crop has been destroyed in a flood.
For more on this and how new investors can change all this by hiring locals and farming in a sustainable manner, read the excellent article by Ethiopian Review: ethiopianreview.com/content/34467
Karuturi is offering part of land for contract farming to companies in India on revenue sharing (35:65) basis.
See attachment for detail.
farmingfaq.pdf (471 KB)
what about conditions for agriculture?
what about regular droughts in this country?
what about security problem?
what about the king’s strategies?
Some of the questions are answered in the FAQ attached in my previous post. It includes temperature, hours of sunlight, and rainfall data.
Agriculture is the main foundation of Ethiopian economy. See Wikipedia on Agriculture in Ethiopia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_ … ia#Climate.
The conditions are particularly favourable for Gambella region due to high fertility of land and accessibility of the river so droughts shouldn’t be a problem. If you look at last year’s drought map - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_East_Africa_drought -, for example, Western Ethiopia (where Gambella is situated) was largely spared. In fact, there was so much rain that part of the first crop of Karaturi was destroyed in flood. It’s said to be building higher dykes to prevent future damage.