The sale of agricultural land will make Ukraine an African-type agricultural colony - Kiev newspaper

The Ukrainian newspaper “Zerkalo Nedeli” believes that the lifting of the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, announced by the head of the presidential administration Petro Poroshenko, threatens to lead to African or Latin American agro-colonialism sample.

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The author of the publication, Yulia Samaeva, notes that Western companies are showing unprecedented interest in purchasing Ukrainian lands. In particular, the famous financial businessman and schemer George Soros has already stated that he is ready to “invest $1 billion in the country’s agriculture.” “Moreover,” the publication writes, “the billionaire has a long-standing relationship with Mr. Abromavicius, who is directly involved in the development of land initiatives.”

“Soros is always interested in crisis economies, moreover, he himself is involved in the creation of these crises. After all, there is nothing more profitable than buying up depreciated resources,” says Yulia Samaeva. The publication recalls that it was Soros who took an active part in the economic life of Latin American countries in the late 90s of the last century. As a result, by 2009, the area of ​​agricultural land in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay owned by Adecoagro, in which Soros is a major shareholder, exceeded 283 thousand hectares.

The newspaper notes the close attention of the Rothschild investment fund to Ukraine's debt obligations. According to Bloomberg, it was in their interests that the American investment fund Franklin Templton bought up a significant part of Ukraine’s sovereign debt.

“How will the state pay for these debts if its financial solvency is completely reduced to nothing? Six years ago, Giovanni Salvetti, managing director of Rothschild&Cie in the Russian Federation and the CIS, bluntly said that his company’s interest in Ukraine goes beyond the financial sector, and that the Rothschilds are primarily interested in Ukrainian pharmaceuticals and agriculture.

At the same time, Rothschild&Cie has been cooperating with Poroshenko for several years, and it is no coincidence that this company was chosen by the president to sell his assets and has not successfully sold them to this day,” the article says.

“Zerkalo Nedeli” believes that in the absence of both adequate valuation standards and a transparent sales procedure, this threatens to end in agro-colonialism of the African or Latin American type. It was under this scheme that ten years ago land was bought in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Kenya, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Each time, this process took place under the “close supervision” of local governments, who talked about mutually beneficial cooperation, the contribution of developed countries to the local economy, the introduction of advanced technologies, capital investments and the development of markets. Naturally, none of the above came true; for a producer, land is a resource and nothing more, and it was the use of this resource that the so-called investors limited themselves to, the author writes.

The consequences of agrocolonialism are catastrophic. Due to the transfer of part of arable land, food production within countries decreased. The intensive methods of farming of the new owners according to the principle “not mine, don’t mind” caused enormous damage to the environment, spoiling the soil, depleting groundwater, and contaminating the soil with chemicals.

“But the main problem of agrocolonialism is that the population living below the poverty line gave their shares to corporations for virtually nothing and deprived their families of one of the main sources of survival. The authorities of these countries, just like the Ukrainian government now, neglected development for the sake of short-term gain and “quick” money. And isn’t this the scenario they are preparing for us by deliberately developing a raw material economy, devaluing the land and the labor of cultivators, and opening the land market so hastily?” the author of the article asks.