A move by the Indonesian government to buy one million hectares of land for beef production in Australia for its own local market has reignited the foreign ownership debate.

Indonesia has moved to solve its beef supply problems by approving a plan to buy one million hectares of Australian farmland, a plot four times the size of the Australian Capital Territory.

Indonesia's announcement yesterday that it plans to buy a million hectares of Australian agricultural land to raise beef cattle is the clearest signal yet that it wants to lower its dependence on the current live export system.

Retired President Benjamin Mkapa attributes the increase in legal tussles over land to excessive red tape and to government's failure to formalise ownership.

Land grabbing has affected an estimated 400,000 Cambodians since 2003, helping to create a sizable under class of landless villagers with no means for self-sustenance.

In the last two decades, the best agricultural lands in Bolivia have been put into commercial production by large-scale producers closely linked to foreign investors, particularly Brazilians.

Given the determination to identify large parcels for so called nucleus farms I am worried that village tenure security is of second priority – it should be the other way around, says researcher Mikael Bergius.

Huishan Dairy has received commitments worth $220 million from three cornerstone investors -Norway's Norges Bank, Yili Group and Cofco Agricultural Industry Management - to expand its herd of cows.

Demand for the lucrative oil is increasing and land in the main exporting countries of Malaysia and Indonesia is quickly running out, so companies are now looking to the hot, humid countries along the Equator in West Africa.

The Hadzabe people of Tanzania are acquiring basic skills on how to survive in a globalised world, where investment in land translates into money.

In Ethiopia, some 43 firms have acquired agricultural land but scores of these have already left the sector, while 16 of them are currently under probation.

Arias said that he has been named as responsible for the eventual loss of farmland by the sugar mills, and for that reason become the subject of an extermination plan.