In a move to further strengthen bilateral ties, Russia announced that it will be giving away 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of arable land to farmers from China. The offer comes at a perfect timing just as Beijing is looking for the needed solution to answer the looming depletion of soybean supply in its market.
Just recently, China snubs farm products, including soybeans, coming from the US as the trade war between the two world superpowers continues to escalate with the implementation of the new tariff and blockades, as stated in this report.
Russia's goodwill to open up its lands for foreign cultivators signals a perfect opportunity for the Xi Jinping administration to cope up with the shortage of the said agricultural supply. However, analysts are quite apprehensive about the quality of the land, questioning whether it is fit to yield the required output by China whose need for soybean and other farm products increases exponentially in a yearly basis.
A report from the South China Morning Post cited the chief of Russia's Far East Investment and Export Agency, Valery Dubrovskiy, confirming that the entire 3 million hectares of farmlands located in the country's Far Eastern Federal District are now up for grabs for farming industries who are interested.
Moreover, Dubrovskiy said that there are already a number of Chinese agricultural firms expressing interest in the farming deal.
The head of the said non-profit organization went on to specify some speculations indicating China to be the major player in the deal, with Russia, Japan and Korea trailing behind.
This recent decision by the Putin government further sheds light on its efforts to enrich the already burgeoning bilateral ties it shared with the Xi Jinping administration. This agribusiness opportunity, according to experts, can definitely increase the trade and economic cooperation that both Kremlin and Beijing have hoped to achieve for a long time now.
Despite this great news, there are sectors expressing their concerns regarding the quality of the farmland.
Dmitri Rylko of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, for example, pointed out that most of the fertile areas in the aforementioned Russian region may have already been disseminated long before the recent land deal was promulgated.
"[The] best lands are occupied and have been heavily exploited by domestic farmers, so if they want more, it will be predominately in remote and low productivity areas," Rylko said.
Russia's Far East Region is apparently not the only portion of the Federation offered for lease.
A previous report from the Washington Post said that Moscow has been offering all its citizens a hectare of the land "in the Kamchatka, Primorye, Khabarovsk, Amur, Magadan and Sakhalin regions, the Republic of Sakha, or the Jewish and Chukotka autonomous districts."
