Chinese companies are planning to invest in maize and tobacco farming in the Zambezi region of Namibia where the environment is very good and the land is fertile. The companies are now doing the preparatory work.
Mitchell's Yougawalla Pastoral Company the latest Australian cattle station business to be put up for sale. Foreign corporations have spent some A$63.5 million buying into the sector in the past month.
Understanding where the money for a given investment comes from and where the produce is sold can provide new levers for public accountability.
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir clarified that Sudan has the land and water and Egypt has the human resources and expertise while gulf countries can provide financing.
Myanmar government has been allocating land for large-scale private agricultural businesses in the country’s biodiversity-rich forests at an alarming rate. Between 2010 and 2013, the area of land marked for commercial agriculture has increased from nearly 2 million acres to 5.2 million acres.
Investment in agricultural production and trade often harms the rights of local and indigenous peoples while failing to contribute significantly to economic development, according to a new report from the Rights and Resources Institute.
Singapore-based Golden Agri-Resources, which has oil palm plantations covering 250,000 ha in Indonesia, wants to expand in Kalimantan. Rights groups accuse the company of taking land from local people without free and informed consent.
Ethiopian Sugar Corp. is tapping loans from Development Bank of China to build six sugar-processing factories and plant 150,000 hectares of sugar cane in the region bordering Kenya. This may exacerbate conflict in the ethnically diverse region.
Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU) has released an update to its 2010 report, "Losing Our Grip", about growing corporate control of farmland and the acceleration of debt among farmers.
The Kwegu, the smallest and most vulnerable tribe in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, is starving as a result of the massive Gibe III dam and associated large-scale irrigation for commercial plantations on tribal land.
More than 200 representatives from remote northeastern Cambodian province refused to accept gifts from land concession company in exchange for clearing their communal land for a rubber tree plantation.
Interest in Vietnam's farmland is growing due to suitable soil and climate conditions, convenient location relative to markets like China and increasing demand for high-tech agricultural products.
