Fields of dreams

‘Buy land,’ Mark Twain once said. ‘They’re not making it any more.’

It was sound advice in the 19th century and remains so today if the Arabian Gulf states' current spending spree on foreign acres is any measure of wisdom.

Arable land is being acquired across Africa and Asia with the aim of securing long-term food supplies for the region as the price of commodity crops rockets. At the same time, the population is burgeoning and needs feeding.

Over the last two years, the price of wheat has risen 114%, while rice has gained 172% and corn 175%, providing a very clear incentive to buy land for the purpose of feeding the next generation.

It also limits the likelihood of a future scenario where Gulf states could conceivably be held over a barrel by the big food producing and exporting countries - an ‘OFEC' as it were.

Although where on earth the Gulf, home to about 40% of the world's oil, could have got that idea, is a mystery.

Without farmland of their own to harrow and plough, states including the UAE and Saudi Arabia are looking elsewhere to sow their seeds.

The Gulf's bid to create a sort of vegetable ‘lebensraum' in the East, in many ways makes a whole lot of sense for a part of the world that has more sand than soil and where Maseratis outnumber Massey Ferguson's.

It also offers a glimpse into an alternative future where spuds and carrots sit alongside bonds and equities in diversified investment portfolios - where traders shout cauliflower sell orders into squawk boxes and analysts issue overweight notes on aubergines.

But the long-term benefits for the countries that are selling their fields may be less straightforward to gauge and could well become a domestic bone of contention.

So far the focus has been on acquiring land in such places as Sudan, Pakistan and Thailand - all countries that face pressing food security issues of their own.

For some reason, the Gulf states have not yet expressed an interest in the far superior farmland available in such places as Texas in the United States of America or in the garden county of Kent in the United Kingdom - both blessed with warm and welcoming local populations with ancient traditions of extending hospitality to foreigners and providing shelter to strangers.

They would be sure to greet their newfound farmer friends of Arabia with garlands fashioned from local flowers and a good old-fashioned barn dance.

If sovereign wealth funds taking the odd stake or two in big Western banks have been enough to induce fits of rage among Western politicians and policymakers these past six months, imagine the fun to be had from watching those same SWF's snap up picket-fenced plots in the Hamptons and Yorkshire Dales.

Now that would be entertaining.

Sean Cronin is the editor of Arabian Business English.

RELATED LINK: From oil to soil

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