US

The debate over foreign investment is set to expand from the mining industry to agriculture as overseas investors pour billions of dollars into Australian rural properties considered by some to be strategic national assets.

"Over the past four years we have, on Schaffer's behalf, frequently raised concerns about various impediments to the sugar project with many senior Malian officials," reports the US mission in Bamako

Un financier new-yorkais vient d'acquérir 400 000 hectares de terres au Soudan. En plus de constituer l'une des plus importantes transactions de ce type depuis la vente de l'Alaska au XIXe siècle, cette transaction fait partie d'une stratégie troublante: la firme Jarch Capital parie que le Soudan, et d'autres pays africains, sont sur le point de se morceler en plusieurs États.

Land ownership could prove contentious. In the distant past, it was often held by communities as a whole or vested in traditional authorities. State officials now often have the greatest say. That opens the potential for official abuse of yet another valuable resource.

A US businessman backed by former CIA and state department officials says he has secured a vast tract of fertile land in south Sudan from the family of a notorious warlord.

Unity state, where Philippe Heilberg, a US businessman, says he has secured a huge tract of arable land, is inaccessible even by south Sudan’s standards. Apart from AK-47 assault rifles, it is deprived of most of the trappings of the modern world.

A privately held US investment firm entered into an agricultural investment with a company controlled by the son of a South Sudanese general.

"Most observers here take the GOM denials at face value, and attribute the whole matter to Daewoo's extreme naivete in having concluded that a permit to look around for land here was anything more than the beginning of a long and still very uncertain process," writes the US embassy in Antananarivo in December 2008

Faced with high land values and falling milk prices at home, a growing number of New Zealand dairy farmers are investing in South America, the United States, eastern Europe and Russia.

As the Caribbean and the rest of the world are still grappling with the global food crisis, Guyana is seeking to sell its vast land and water resources to United States investors as an area suitable for agriculture and aquaculture investment.

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

The owners of Multigrain, a leading Brazil-based agricultural commodity business, announced today the company has acquired 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of farmland and related processing operations intended to strengthen its ability to serve customers around the world.