Karuturi Global on farming in Ethiopia

Karuturi Global management says - "To start with there will be 20,000 hectares of oil palm, 15,000 hectares of sugar cane and 40,000 hectares of rice, edible oils and maize and cotton. We are building reservoirs, dykes, roads, towns of 15,000 people. "This is phase one. In three years time we will have 300,000 hectares cultivated and maybe 60,000 workers. We could feed a nation here."

It's the deal of the century: £150 a week to lease more than 2,500 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of virgin, fertile land -- an area the size of Dorset -- for 50 years. Bangalore-based food company Karuturi Global says it had not even seen the land when it was offered by the Ethiopian government with tax breaks thrown in.

Karuturi snapped it up, and next year the company, one of the world's top 25 agri-businesses, will export palm oil, sugar, rice and other foods from Gambella province -- a remote region near the Sudan border -- to world markets.

Ethiopia is one of the world's largest recipients of humanitarian food and development assistance, last year receiving more than 700,000 tonnes of food and £1.8bn in aid, but it has offered three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of virgin land to foreign corporations such as Karuturi.

"It's very good land. It's quite cheap. In fact it is very cheap. We have no land like this in India," says Karmjeet Sekhon, project manager for what is expected to be one of Africa's largest farms. "There you are lucky to get 1% of organic matter in the soil. Here it is more than 5%. We don't need fertiliser or herbicides. There is absolutely nothing that will not grow on it.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Karuturi
• Global
• Gambella
• Ethiopia
• farmland
• farming

[naveenemri]

every one says karuturi grabbed land for so less, what do you expect he can grow crops right away and earn profits, its like giving a seed and saying he got we gave a future 1000 fruits for just a penny. farming is not bed of roses it needs lot of investment and risk as well, do you think west is dumb in loosing such opportunity it needs lot of dedication so only few came forward and karuturi is one of the hard workers among them. one must appreciate him for the risk he has taken in investing.