The desert states of the Gulf are changing tack in their multi-billion dollar search for food security.
With their farming projects in some of the poorest African nations sometimes arousing local hostility, wealthy Arab investors are turning to those developed countries that comfortably produce more food than they consume.
UAE-based agricultural firm Al Dahra has chose this path in March, buying eight agricultural companies for $400 million in Serbia, a major food exporter where public attitudes to foreign-owned farming may be less sensitive.
Projects in Europe, North America and Australasia tend to be more expensive and offer less scope to build vast estates like in Africa. But they also present fewer political problems and less risk for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait which all need to feed growing populations.
For years the Gulf states, dependent on imports for 80 to 90 per cent of their food, poured cash into buying tens of thousands of hectares of cheap farmland and other agricultural assets in the developing world, mainly Africa.
They hoped these investments would give them direct access to big food production bases, insulating them from global swings in food prices. But the reality has proved difficult.
Some of the African projects have drawn accusations that Arab investors are grabbing land that should be used to feed local people. Bad security and weak infrastructure have plagued some ventures.
Although Gulf companies announced plans to spend billions of dollars, the problems mean many of the projects have not gone ahead, at least not to the point of large-scale food production, said Eckart Woertz, senior research fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
“Rather than greenfield investments in Africa, the focus is more on putting money in already established agro-producers,” said Woertz, author of a book on the subject, Oil for Food.
The Gulf states began investing heavily in farmland overseas around 2008, after bad weather in big food producing nations, growing use of biofuels and curbs on farm exports by some governments sent grain futures markets soaring.
Wealthy Gulf governments never came close to facing food shortages but they did get a fright – especially because the price of oil, their main source of income, briefly tumbled by three-quarters in 2008.
