No one is keeping an eye on foreign investors who are buying up prime Australian farming land. Cashed up, government-backed buyers from China, the Middle East and Singapore are buying land for their future food needs. Australian companies like Golden Circle, SPC, CSR Sugar, SunRice and AWB are now all owned by foreigners. A Chinese delegation will arrive next month with pockets full of money to buy dairy farms, prime agricultural land and water.
Tasmanian Real Estate manager Betty Kay said she had five Chinese investors looking to buy dairy farms. Australian farmers who can no longer make a decent living are happy to sell but no one is keeping tabs on who they are selling to. Suddenly Canberra has woken up to the fact that if this situation continues to go unchecked, we mightn't have enough land left for our own food supplies.
Some of the world's biggest agricultural companies like Spanish Ebro Foods is bidding $600 million to buy SunRice while Singapore based Wilmar International won a $1.75 billion bid for CSR's sugar and renewable energy business. This is surely a worry and should have set bells ringing through Parliament House.
The global financial crisis created food shotages around the world and all eyes are on Australia. Christine Milne from the Greens is pushing for stricter controls. "It is now imperative that Australia protects its land and water as part of national sovereignty" she said. How ironic that it takes a minority party to wake up the country about foreign ownership. What have our two major parties been doing? They've been asleep at the wheel and now it's time to wake up Australia before it's too late.
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