Bulgaria

Tianjin State Farms plans to buy 10,000 hectares of land in north-western Bulgaria to grow corn and other fodder crops that will be shipped to China, Bulgaria's agricultural ministry said.

The Abu Dhabi Development Fund eyes the opportunity to invest in Bulgarian agriculture.

UAE-based investment company Al Barakah has shown interest in developing agriculture and farming projects in Bulgaria.

More than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a gulf still exists between farm prices in eastern and western Germany which provides a "good opportunity" for investors, a boss at KTG Agrar has said.

Karoll Capital Management, the country's largest landlord after the government, sees continuing prospects for farmland investment in Bulgaria

"As more investors look into the opportunities that developed nations present there will be no need to go underground or be ashamed of these deals," said Hakan Agro's Tomar.

The fund is in the process of leasing 50,000 hectares of land in Tanzania which will be complete by the end of this year and will mainly be for rice production.

With shaky stock markets across the globe, more and more investors are looking to buy tracts of land with and without planning permission in emerging markets and in particular in Bulgaria, where agricultural land prices alone are twice as low as the rest of the Eastern bloc.