The School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa will be hosting a high-profile roundtable discussion on March 28th from 9am-12pm that will feature a panel of experts discussing the scale and deleterious impacts of land acquisitions, particularly in Africa. Venure: Desmarais, 55 Laurier Avenue East, Room 3120. Contact: [email protected]

Thursday 15 March from 10am to 12.30pm, Docks des Suds B, Alternative World Water Forum, Marseille
Agribusinesses are expanding and taking over control over water resources, buying the right to exploit land and water resources. This leads and will lead to water battles between people that see their rights to water reduced and the agribusinesses that accumulate water.
We will promote and show real solutions towards resilient agriculture, food, energy and water systems from a water justice perspective. This should raise awareness that equitable and ecologically sustainable water governance system is a cornerstone for realizing not only right to water but also climate justice and the right to food.

Welcome to AgReturn San Francisco 2012, a new kind of agriculture investment conference--one that embraces the surrounding themes of agriculture, real assets, and scarcity-driven investments. For the first time, we will deliver fully comprehensive strategy discussion on everything from public equities to innovations in inputs, precision technology and animal health, to mature markets farmland plays, water rights and efficiency. This is a one-stop commercial marketplace for the industry. Make sure this event is on your calendar for 2012.

International capital, multinational enterprises, and even some governments are increasingly taking control over farmland around the world. Large amount of highly productive land is taken away from farmers, mainly in developing countries but also within the EU and Central and Eastern Europe. The conference wishes to highlight the problem of land grabbing in the global food crisis and the human right to food, present existing alternative land management models and encourage decision makers to implement new instruments for sustainable land ownership models.Please register online before 5 March 2012.

Salon anticolonial, La Bellevilloise, 26 février 2012, 11h-13h
Débat organisé, présenté et modéré par l’AFASPA (Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique)
Au Forum Social Mondial 2011 de Dakar, l’accaparement massif des terres agricoles a été pointé comme une nouvelle forme de colonialisme qui hypothèque à terme la souveraineté alimentaire des populations et les dépossède de leur bien souvent le plus précieux, la terre.
Les intervenants présenteront des cas spécifiques d’accaparement de terres puis des formes diverses et variées de résistance des populations et des sociétés civiles organisées et de mobilisation des réseaux et éventuellement, des expériences de constructions d’alternatives soit de réformes agraires soit d’infléchissements - dans un sens de justice, d’équité et de solidarité - des politiques foncières en vigueur, etc...

Debate on the issue of international farmland deals in Africa - or land grabbing as it’s commonly known. The debate takes place in Freetown Sierra Leone on Friday 24th February 2012 and is broadcasted at 1900 GMT. Join in the debate via social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc).

Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand, 9:30 am, Thursday, 2 February 2012
Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia (LOCOA), an Asian regional network of urban poor slum dwellers and organizations that work to support them, together with People's Movement for a Just Society (P-Move), a Thai umbrella formation linking together organizations of the urban and rural poor who are adversely affected by Thai development policies, including Four Regions Slum Network, the Network of Communities for Social and Political Reform, the Northern Peasants Federation, the Assembly of the Poor-Pak Mun, and the Northeastern Land Reform Network, will hold a press conference at the FCCT to express its position on land grabbing and evictions, and explain its opposition to the World Bank's principles of "responsible agricultural investment." Directly after the press conference, LOCOA and P-Move will hold a public demonstration and attempt to submit a petition regarding the principles of "responsible agricultural investment" at the World Bank's Bangkok office.

The farmers of the National Coordination of Farming Organizations (CNOP) in Mali and the international farmers’ movement Via Campesina hereby invite the press to cover the first international farmers’ conference whose objective is to strengthen the fight against the land grabs which are rife in Africa and other parts of the world.

The Global Economic Symposium, to be held 4-6 October in Kiel, Germany, will have a special session on land grabbing called "Dealing with the Race for Agricultural Land"

Global AgInvesting 2011 will bring together leading global ag-sector end-investors, ag-managers, academics, policy experts and agribusiness industry executives to explore the opportunities and challenges of investing in agriculture.