Saudi Arabian "Food Colonies" in Argentina

Ayoreo children in the Chaco region of north-west Paraguay now being "colonized" by Saudi Arabia.

The Road to Serfdom, Part V

Saudi Arabian land grab turns Argentina into a "food colony"


The Media Complex keeps people worked up about unimportant things while hiding big events going on right under our noses with next to zero coverage.

All over the world Governments and their private "Wealth Funds" are buying up farm land, natural resources and mineral rights.  See our article The Federalist  -  China buys oil fields in Texas .

This is NOT the free market at work.  This is Benito Mussolini's Corporatism  -  often a blend of government and corporations.  Many of the products produced on these lands never go on an open market to be bid on by possible buyers.  Many times they are simply shipped to the home country for their exclusive use.

Today, Saudi Arabia is abandoning grain farming because of water issues.  To get their grain they are buying up land in under the table crooked deals with governments, disregarding the property rights of locals and setting up Saudi owned "Food Colonies" to ship food directly and exclusively to Saudi Arabia.

The people of South America will no longer own their own land.  They will become modern Serfs working the land for their Lords in Arabia.

Foreign owned "Food Colonies" are being established in
the Chaco region that takes in parts of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina and Bolivia.

 The Chaco – which stretches across Argentina and Paraguay – is now being ripped up and converted to US-style ranch land by bulldozers even faster than it was before and the few Indians who live there have never felt more threatened. Brazilian ranchers, attracted by Paraguayan laws that allow people to fell 70% of their trees, are leading the rush with local Mennonites to buy land, piling across the borders to grow soya and grains reports the UK Guardian.

Now the Saudis have pulled off a classic "land grab" which will destroy a vast area of the Chaco in neighboring Argentina. This year, the immense Al-Khorayef conglomerate announced it was to spend $400m "irrigating and developing" nearly 200,000 hectares to grow food for Saudi Arabia.

This comes under the Saudi government's national food security plan which sees the kingdom move out of grain-growing over the next seven years to save their dwindling water supplies.

Saudi businesses have been given billions of dollars to buy land around the world and are even now investing in Ethiopia, Sudan, India, Uruguay and elsewhere.  In Paraguay, the Ayoreo, whose un-contacted relations were known to use the areas where the NHM was planning to go, argued that the British expedition threatened genocide. In Argentina, where the forests and wilderness has fallen even faster in the past 30 years than in Paraguay, aboriginal groups like the Toba, Wichi, Cuom and Mocovi, have been, in effect, exterminated as ranchers have cut down their trees and destroyed the hunting grounds they depended on.

Today's transformation of the Chaco is an ecological and human tragedy, the culmination of centuries of exploitation and land grabbing by colonists, corporations and great powers. Even the Gran Chaco war of 1928-35 in which as many as 100,000 Bolivians and Paraguayans fought over the wilderness for oil and land ownership, did not do so much ecological damage. The old trenches used in this precursor to the second world war are still visible, but the wildlife recovered.

Iniciativa Amotiocodie, the small human rights organization that tried to alert the world to the plight of the Ayoreo in the Chaco, faces draconian penalties by the state, and leaders of the Ayoreo have now written to the UN to complain about a Brazilian company which has destroyed much of their land.

But the conservationists have not given up. The small but effective World Land Trust, has, with local partner Guyra Paraguay, tried to hold a line and now owns 2.5m ha, an area roughly the size of East Anglia. It's not much in the greater picture, but it's an example for everyone.  (See UK Guardian)

The indigenous groups who roamed across the Chaco, but had no land title, are distraught as corrupt governments sell the land right out from under them that they have lived on for centuries.

SAUDI ARABIA HAS A "FOOD COLONY" IN AGRENTINA
NBK CEO Shaikha Al Bahar with Chairman and Managing Director of Al Khorayef Group
Saad Al Khorayef and Boubyan Vice Chairman and Managing Director Adel Al Majed

In Paraguay, the Ayoreo, whose un-contacted relations were known to use the areas where the NHM was planning to go, argued that the British expedition threatened genocide. In Argentina, where the forests and wilderness has fallen even faster in the past 30 years than in Paraguay, aboriginal groups like the Toba, Wichi, Cuom and Mocovi, have been, in effect, exterminated as ranchers have cut down their trees and destroyed the hunting grounds they depended on.

Today's transformation of the Chaco is an ecological and human tragedy, the culmination of centuries of exploitation and land grabbing by colonists, corporations and great powers. Even the Gran Chaco war of 1928-35 in which as many as 100,000 Bolivians and Paraguayans fought over the wilderness for oil and land ownership, did not do so much ecological damage. The old trenches used in this precursor to the second world war are still visible, but the wildlife recovered.

Iniciativa Amotiocodie, the small human rights organization that tried to alert the world to the plight of the Ayoreo in the Chaco, faces draconian penalties by the state, and leaders of the Ayoreo have now written to the UN to complain about a Brazilian company which has destroyed much of their land.

But the conservationists have not given up. The small but effective World Land Trust, has, with local partner Guyra Paraguay, tried to hold a line and now owns 2.5m ha, an area roughly the size of East Anglia. It's not much in the greater picture, but it's an example for everyone.  (See UK Guardian)

Remember to always bow down to your Feudal Lord and Master.