Sweden

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Nomadic herders, rarely a priority for governments, are being dispossessed by bioethanol developments in Kenya, says Michael Taylor of the International Land Coalition (ILC), and they also depend on the “unused” land that Madagascar offered Daewoo.

Investors are pouring billions into Russian agribusiness—and trying to reverse decades of Soviet mismanagement.

Lured by soaring food prices, corporations - both domestic and foreign - have been snapping up land in this fertile region the size of France, replacing inefficient Soviet-style collective farming with modern farming techniques and economies of scale.

“Foreigners who come here get astonished at the gleaming black earth,” said Viktor Karnushin, head of a local subsidiary of Sweden’s Black Earth Farming corporation, one of the biggest foreign players in Russian farming.

“I am satisfied with what we have achieved during the first half of 2008. We have been able to combine a fast increase in land under control with successful operations. The harvested area is estimated to be approximately 53,900 hectares with an estimated harvest of approximately 150,600 tonnes, which is higher than expected.”

Companies listed on European exchanges have been acquiring large amounts of farmland in Russia

Les compagnies étrangères cotées dans les bourses européennes achètent activement des terres agricoles en Russie

Alpcot Agro is currently in control of 128,800 hectares of arable land in Russia and wants to control 200,000 hectares by the end of 2008.

Since 1999, The Ingleby Company has bought about 17 farms. The company runs just under 20,000ha of land with 130,000 stock units, most of which are sheep and cattle.