{"id":23942,"date":"2011-05-18T09:31:49","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T13:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=23942"},"modified":"2011-05-18T09:31:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T13:31:49","slug":"bangladeshi-companies-launch-africa-farm-lease-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=23942","title":{"rendered":"Bangladeshi companies launch Africa farm lease plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bangladeshi companies say they have leased thousands of hectares of farmland in Africa as part of their efforts to avoid future food shortages.\u00a0 <em>Bangladesh is the world&#8217;s fourth largest producer of rice <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Two Bangladeshi companies have already signed deals to lease unused cultivable land in Uganda, Tanzania and Gambia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another agreement to lease around 30,000 hectares for 99 years will be signed with the Tanzanian government later this week.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Officials say African countries have huge amounts of unused cultivable land.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At the same time they say that Bangladesh has the manpower and expertise to produce staple crops all year round.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8216;Food security&#8217;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Under the plans, the Contract Farming System will enable Bangladeshi companies to get at least 60% of the produce.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In return Bangladesh will train African farmers in rain-fed rice cultivation, seed conservation and irrigation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It is hoped that the new arrangement will increase food productivity and enable the country&#8217;s expanding workforce to be deployed in Africa&#8217;s farming sector.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Basically this idea is mainly for proper management of our food security,&#8221; said Wahidur Rahman, a senior Bangladeshi foreign ministry official.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;We are thinking of expanding our agriculture, but we do not have enough land to cultivate. Because of this we are thinking Africa may be the destination for our agriculture production.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bangladesh is the world&#8217;s fourth largest producer of rice and it harvested around 34 million tonnes last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Although the country produces enough to feed its population of 160 million people, it faces shortages at times because of natural disasters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Officials say apart from rice there is also scope to cultivate other crops such as wheat and cotton in Africa.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bangladeshi companies say they have leased thousands of hectares of farmland in Africa as part of their efforts to avoid future food shortages.\u00a0 Bangladesh is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[751,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}