Food will be a more precious commodity than petrol & energy in future. So, we shall be able to export food to countries like Saudi Arab at higher prices in future. Let these Saudis & other countries pay more petro dollars to us through buying food from us, instead of giving them opportunity to grow their own food on our land. They have been squeezing quite a lot from us while selling petroleum to us at quite exorbitant rates, & making our labor work up there at such miserably low salaries. It will be their pay back time in future. So the government should not dare sell or lease such a precious land to anybody.

Only idiots won’t understand the real worth of farmland which it will hold in future & might like to sell by taking a few billion dollars. Even if they do sell there will be a time in future when we’ll grab it back from them.

Rony is a UFO which deserves to be ignored.

David: This seems like a page out of the tarnscript of US president Speech.

Hilarious to read this: “endanger whole world order”.
It is not the terrorists thus far that has so much disturbed the world order, so far it is the US. Nukes have so far been used only once–Japan by US. How many civilians have been killed by the terrorists and how many by US? I have no count–my guess says US is the winner here.
I know my fellow Indian bloggers will start to feel uncomfortable. US citizens like you, far away from te reality, giving presidential speech on the blogs are doing no one any good.

—U.S.Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress

So Pakistan is selling its land! So? What else is new? They already gave away a part of Kashmir to the Chinese. Are the Pakistani elite hoping that by selling large acres of land to the Arab countries that Uncle Sheikh Ali Baba Oil Money Bags will use the land to culivate crops to feed the displaced from the fighting in Swat and Bunar. This a joke!

-Pakistan has got Mr. 10 % as President with a begging bowl.
-Pakistan has lost 10% of its area to Taliban control.
-Pakistan has lost cricket as hosts.

What more do they want to lose?

This Reuters story has an overview of land sales globally, based on a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The story also includes a link to the original IFPRI report.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews  /idUSTRE53S97N20090430

This article seems to have a lot of useful links to assessments on the value of land sales:

http://www.stwr.org/food-security-agricu lture/land-grabbing-the-end-of-sustainab le-agriculture.html

As far as I can see, the argument in favour is that it brings in much needed investment and technology; the argument against is that it primarily benefits those who own or lease the land rather than local people; and if it damages the surrounding environment, they will be even worse off.

Anup, thanks for your figures. Where did they come from?

Myra

—Almost all Pakistani elite in the army & the political arena hold dual citizenship with large chunk of money & huge properties in the west, obviously they are also well aware of the high uncertainty & temporary nature of the powers they wield presently, so they simply gonna sell Pakistan piecemeal & take a flight when it’s over for them.

— RIP! The terrorists can lay their hands on the nuke only on instructions from white hall to hand em over to them & nuke you on the sole command of Uncle Sam…

On one hand Pakistan is spending so much militarily for “land of kashmir” , on the other it is willing to sell land to Gulf countries! I wonder a day will come when Pak may offer POK for sale..May be to India..hmmmm.. not sure.. May be to China.

So point is, would Pak remain a sovereign country if it sells part of land here and there in Pak to other countries.. Has something like this ever happened anywhere in the world? Can somebody point to it?