China to Acquire Ukrainian Farmland

China to Acquire Ukrainian Farmland / Picture: © Flickr

According to a newspaper report, the Ukraine will sell farmland in the dimensions of almost 30,000 square kilometers to Chinese enterprises. The state-owned company Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) has sigened a resprective agreement with Ukrainian agricultural corporation KSG Agro, according to Sunday’s reports by “South China Morning Post.

As a first step, China will receive access to farmland in the size of 100,000 hectar which, ultimately, is supposed to be enlarged to three million hectars. This area equals one third of the agricultural area in Germany.

In the coming fifty years, crops are supposed to be grown and animals bred for the Chinese market. However, a spokesman of XPCC rejected to give a statement. China has been aquiring foreign farmland for some time now as the country only has nine percent of fertile land but is home to one fifth of all people on Earth. Recently, criticism has been voiced as Australian politicians demand a stricter surveillance in the case of foreigners purchasing farmland after China had aquired the country’s largest cotton farm.

The Ukraine is one of the largest international producers of wheat. According to Mykola Prysyazhnyuk, Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, the Eastern European country will export an annual amount of up to 33m tons of grain until 2021. His statements are based on estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organziation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Ukraine could make it to number six in the global wheat exporter rating in 2013.