Investors are pouring into farmland in the US and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar.

BlackRock agriculture fund manager says they are investing in companies that own land and grow crops.

BlackRock funds take long-term positions in companies that own land, produce crops, raise livestock or sell agricultural equipment.

The companies the $100 million fund will target will be those involved with agrichemicals, equipment and infrastructure, as well as soft commodities and food, biofuels, forestry, agricultural sciences and arable land.

"In any resource sector, if you want to get involved, you always want to be in the upstream. It doesn't matter whether it's mining, whether its oil and gas or agriculture," says ABN AMRO's Tariono.

Because of the political sensitivity of the modern-day land grab, it is often only the country's head of state who knows the details. Der Spiegel investigates.

As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that's what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe.

Los defensores del modelo de poner a producir las tierras desde los gobiernos, inversionistas o grandes corporaciones argumentan que se generan puestos de trabajo, que se hace rendir tierras ociosas y que se producen alimentos. Pero en ese análisis falta el principal elemento. La pobreza en el mundo reside en el campo, precisamente por modelos como éste.

The fund will invest 70 percent of its money in agricultural companies that make fertilizers, forest products or biofuels. Commodities such as corn and soybeans will account for 15 percent, with the remainder in farmland.

Big Money from Wall St. to the Middle East are on the hunt for farmland. Canada, especially Ontario, stands to profit but will the costs be too great?

Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans. But a few big private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment.

Hedge funds and investment banks are swapping their Gucci for gumboots as they bet on rising food prices by buying farms.