China buys up agricultural land in central France
A Chinese company has acquired hundreds of hectares of cereal-producing farmland in central France. This unprecedented situation has provoked astonishment and anger in the farming community.
The reaction of the French National Federation of Land Management and Rural Development Agencies (SAFER) was simple outrage. “It is possible to buy 1,700 hectares of cereal farmland in France unchecked!” the organisation wrote in a press release.
Emmanuel Hyest, the president of SAFER, admitted to the Journal de l’Environnement that he had “no idea” what sort of activity the company undertook in China. A quick search for the Hongyang company online revealed that their usual line of business is equipment for service stations. “It is one of those companies that has had success in other sectors and is looking to diversify its activities,” said Hyest.
Food security
“If this should become a common phenomenon, it would put our food security at risk,” said a representative of France’s farming unions (FNSEA). “The equivalent of 35 million hectares-worth of food production is already imported into Europe each year.”
In a report entitled “Stolen Earth”, Friends of the Earth France estimated that in 2013, Europe imported food from “the equivalent of five times the surface area of France, mainly from India and China”. The competition for land that this over-consumption generates has inevitable consequences for other countries of the Global South, and increasingly on Europe itself.
A Chinese company has acquired hundreds of hectares of cereal-producing farmland in central France. This unprecedented situation has provoked astonishment and anger in the farming community.
The reaction of the French National Federation of Land Management and Rural Development Agencies (SAFER) was simple outrage. “It is possible to buy 1,700 hectares of cereal farmland in France unchecked!” the organisation wrote in a press release.
Emmanuel Hyest, the president of SAFER, admitted to the Journal de l’Environnement that he had “no idea” what sort of activity the company undertook in China. A quick search for the Hongyang company online revealed that their usual line of business is equipment for service stations. “It is one of those companies that has had success in other sectors and is looking to diversify its activities,” said Hyest.
Food security
“If this should become a common phenomenon, it would put our food security at risk,” said a representative of France’s farming unions (FNSEA). “The equivalent of 35 million hectares-worth of food production is already imported into Europe each year.”
In a report entitled “Stolen Earth”, Friends of the Earth France estimated that in 2013, Europe imported food from “the equivalent of five times the surface area of France, mainly from India and China”. The competition for land that this over-consumption generates has inevitable consequences for other countries of the Global South, and increasingly on Europe itself.
