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Ukraine has agreed a deal with a Chinese company to lease 5% of its land to feed China’s burgeoning population, it was reported on Tuesday.

It would be the biggest so called “land grab” agreement, where one country leases or sells land to another, in a trend that has been compared with the 19th century “scramble for Africa”, but which is now spreading to eastern Europe.

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Under the 50-year plan, China would eventually control 7.5 million acres, an area equivalent to the size of Belgium or Massachusetts, which represents 9% of Ukraine’s arable land.

Initially 250,000 acres would be leased. The farmland in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region would be cultivated principally for growing crops and raising pigs. The produce would be sold at preferential prices to Chinese state-owned conglomerates, said the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp (XPCC), a quasi-military organisation also known as Bingtuan.