Indigenous families in Paraguay have been living precariously on the side of a highway in the remote Chaco region for more than 20 years, ever since a German cattle rancher and the Paraguayan state illegally kicked them off of their ancestral lands.

Singapore yesterday sought “strong, firm, effective” action against Singaporean companies that may be involved in illegal burning in Indonesia that led to the city-state’s worst pollution on record.

Among the concerns is that smallholder farmers could be pushed out of their land to make way for large, powerful international corporations.

Yamba has been warned by her local MP not to accept any offer by an investor for her "worthless" roadside scrubland. When the new road from Iringa to Dodoma is finished, it could be worth a fortune, he says.

China's Legend Holdings went on a buying binge, both at home and abroad, taking over a blueberry farm in Qingdao, a kiwi fruit company in Sichuan Province and five Chilean fruit companies.

Africa is the main target for “land grabs” by foreign investors, according to a new report on large-scale land acquisitions around the world released June 10.

Governments, international finance institutions and global corporations are collaborating in major new projects in Africa to reorder land and water use and create industrial infrastructure over millions of hectares.

Companies linked to China's biggest agricultural conglomerate are being flooded with offers to buy or lease "hundreds of thousands" of hectares of land in Australia's Wheatbelt in the early stages of their bid to create an independent grain supply chain from the port of Albany.

Weeks before a Chinese conglomerate agreed to buy Smithfield Foods Inc. in the largest such takeover of a US business, Missouri lawmakers quietly approved legislation removing a ban on foreign ownership of agricultural land.

“Many more [foreign farmland investors] have expressed interest to come and we are working on modalities to accommodate them,” Sierra Leone's Minister of Agriculture Dr. Sam Sesay said.

Mozambican smallholders thought they could do a deal with agribusiness. Hazel Healy reports on how transnational OLAM treated its so-called partners.

Managing director of SABMiller Africa says Africa needs both large-scale commercial farming and smallholders and calls for "a fair and enforceable system" of land rights