Sudan

Hassad Food Company intends to invest $500mn to $700mn this year for projects across the world as part of its mission to ensure food security for Qatar, chairman and managing director Nasser bin Mohamed Mubarak al-Fuhaid al-Hajri has said.

Do we or do we not want to promote Arab agricultural integration and to foster inter Arab investments in farming?

As African leaders, many out to line their own pockets, sign away their people's land to foreigners, the continent's people face not having enough food to eat.

"A key obstacle to more transparent debate and informed decisions by governments and investors [involved in global land transactions] is the lack of science-based information," writes Surendra Shah in Nature magazine

Interview with Wadid Erian of the Arab Centre for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands.

El-Nahda for Integrated Solutions signed an agreement with the White Nile Governorate for a 30-year lease on 60,000 feddans [25,210 ha] of land on which it will build a large-scale commercial rice farm.

Countries that have recently invited India, through the ministry of agriculture, to lease land for farming include Egypt, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Senegal, Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago and Tunisia.

The fund is targeting individual investors and institutions as well as government-owned funds in the region, and will focus on the production of crops and livestock in Sudan and food processing in Egypt.

Comprar tierras agrícolas, principalmente en África y América Latina, es una apuesta poco arriesgada, dado el rápido crecimiento de la población mundial a alimentar, señalan los expertos.

"We are launching the fund with the aim of deploying up to $1 billion for large-scale agricultural projects," Beltone told Reuters.

A move by Madagascar's army-backed leader to nix a huge South Korean farming deal has exposed the risks of such ventures in Africa.

The Chinese company ZTE received an allocation of approximately 10,000 hectares of land from the Ministry of Agriculture. The deal aims at boosting production of wheat and maize, state media reported.