think China will have something to say especially with it...

think China will have something to say especially with it singularity aim of feeding its own nation and not relying totally on the Antipodes


China 'to rent five per cent of Ukraine'

Ukraine has agreed a deal with a Chinese firm to lease five per cent of its land to feed China's burgeoning and increasingly demanding population, it has been reported.
Ukraine is rich in arable land

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent

7:18PM BST 24 Sep 2013

It would be the biggest so called "land grab" agreement, where one country leases or sells land to another, in a trend that has been compared to the 19th century "scramble for Africa", but which could now spread to the vast and fertile plains of eastern Europe.


Under the 50-year plan, China would eventually control three million hectares, an area equivalent to Belgium or Massachusetts, which represents nine per cent of Ukraine's arable land. Initially 100,000 hectares would be leased.


The farmland in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region would be cultivated principally for growing crops and raising pigs. The produce will be sold at preferential prices to Chinese state-owned conglomerates, said the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp (XPCC), a quasi-military organisation also known as Bingtuan.


XPCC said on Tuesday that it had signed the £1.7 billion agreement in June with KSG Agro, Ukraine's leading agricultural company. KSG Agro however denied reports that it had sold land to the Chinese, saying it had only reached agreement for the Chinese to modernise 3,000 hectares and "may in the future gradually expand to cover more areas".


Any sort of "land-grab" deal can be highly sensitive politically. Madagascar was forced to scrap a plan to lease 1.2 million hectares to South Korea in 2009 after angry protests against "neo-colonialism". The Philippines has also blocked a China investment deal.