According to BlackRock world agriculture fund portfolio manager and director Desmond Cheung there is a "wall of money" that is looking to back the world's growing appetite for a stable and growing food supply.
Rural land produced some of the best investment returns in Europe since the financial crisis began five years ago, appreciating by 51 percent across England
The companies the $100 million fund will target will be those involved with agrichemicals, equipment and infrastructure, as well as soft commodities and food, biofuels, forestry, agricultural sciences and arable land.
"In any resource sector, if you want to get involved, you always want to be in the upstream. It doesn't matter whether it's mining, whether its oil and gas or agriculture," says ABN AMRO's Tariono.
Because of the political sensitivity of the modern-day land grab, it is often only the country's head of state who knows the details. Der Spiegel investigates.