Ukraine

Farmland prices are firming across much of Central and Eastern Europe, as interest from institutional investors -- mainly pension funds -- begins to translate into transactions on the ground.

The acquisition takes to 422,000 hectares the area which Kernel controls in the Ukraine – an area bigger than Luxembourg or most UK counties.

A consortium of Saudi groups - comprising dairy giant Almarai, grain importer Al Rajhi and Salic, the agriculture arm of the country's Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund – buys Continental Farmers Group, which has large farming operations in Poland and the Ukraine.

Governments in a number of countries are trying to address concerns about land grabbing by closing their borders to foreign investors. Are these restrictions effective? Not really, says GRAIN.

US-based Aslan Global Management, a leader in the "patient capital" movement, manages more than 12,000 hectares of farmland in Ukraine and Mozambique on long-term lease and just entered into a 99-year lease for 45,000 hectares in Tanzania.

The proceeds of the investment will be used to install sugar beet processing equipment and to further develop sugar beet growing operations in the region, through a joint venture with Continental Farming Group.

Ukraine’s parliament extended a ban on sales of farmland by three years to January 2016, giving time to prepare related legislation.

Ukraine will have no farmland market in the near future, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn has said.

Japan wants to grow corn on Ukraine's black earth and import it while Ukraine suggests that Japan, as a "hi-tech country", invest in Ukrainian farmland.

In Ukraine, MPs did not extend land sale moratorium, but experts say it is legally impossible to launch market on January 1, 2013

Public-private partnership program envisions letting investors farm up to 4 million hectares of currently unused government land for up to 50 years in large-scale 400,000-hectare projects.

Saudi Arabia has invested around 40 billion riyals in agricultural and livestock projects in the Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Sudan, says chairman of the agricultural investment committee at the Saudi Council of Chambers.