27 de octubre de 2010 | Noticias | Soberanía Alimentaria
Outside, Please
Uruguay: concern over land foreignization and prices
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From 2000 to 2009, over six million hectares of lands in Uruguay were sold and more than half were bought by foreigners, in a country with 16 million hectares of arable land. The increasing demand for lands, mainly for agribusiness, has resulted in a steep rise in the price of lands.
According to numbers by the Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry of Uruguay, in 2002, amid a serious economic crisis in the country, the average price of an hectare of land was 386 dollars. In 2010, it amounted to 2,650 dollars.
The Uruguayan government is worried about this. According to Brazilian newspaper Valor Economico, Andres Berterreche, President of the National Institute of Colonization, said that the purchase of large extensions of land by “five or six companies” can turn a small country as Uruguay into an “oligopoly of production”.
Also, Uruguayan Senator Jorge Saravia, from the party in office Frente Amplio, said that 25 per cent of agricultural lands in the country is controlled by foreigners, especially Argentinian and Brazilian people.
In the agribusiness sector, the production of GM soy in Uruguay occupies around 850 thousand hectares, and it is estimated to reach 1 million hectares by 2011.
Meanwhile, tree monoculture plantations for the production of cellulose occupy more than 1 million hectares, with Finnish, Swiss, Chilean and US capitals.
The concerns of the Uruguayan government are reflected by President Jose Mujica himself, especially after confirming the interest of Chinese investors. Mujica asked several members of parliament, among them Jorge Saravia, to draft regulations to limit the sale of lands to foreigners.
According to Valor Economico, Saravia said that the Bill will be introduced soon. “We have to take precautions, look what is happening in Africa”, said Berterreche, who believes that it is necessary to bring the Corporations Law into effect to stop land foreignization.
This law establishes that only individuals can be the owners of lands, but it won´t be implemented until May 2011 because the “amount of exceptions was so large that it was impossible to implement the law in an effective way”, said Berterreche. These exceptional cases allow certain companies to buy lands. Other governmental sources even confirmed that exceptions are authorized all the time, at the request of the Ministry of Economy.
Berterreche said: “we have been very liberal in terms of land acquisition, but this is putting family agriculture at risk”.
The increasing demand for lands has resulted in a rise of prices and this has made the work of the National Institute of Colonization difficult. The institute is in charge of implementing measures to avoid land concentration, to promote small-scale agriculture and to manage the occupation of agricultural areas. “When competing for the purchase of lands, the relationship between the budget of the National Institute of Colonization and the investment funds and the large companies is extremely unequal”, said Berterreche.
