Imagine a land of 14 million hectares, bigger than Switzerland and Austria combined. Populated by millions of farming families that together practice shifting cultivation. Now imagine a foreign consultant saying that all of these are abandoned lands.
A Swedish pension fund has become the latest of a series of purchasers of Australian farmland, a buying spree which has fuelled public concerns, and raised discussion over curbs on foreign ownership.
From a a palm oil plantation run by a Malaysian company, Sime Darby, the Today programme's Evan Davis looked into whether lands deals are a route into better life, or a signing away of the nation's wealth.
Governments, IFIs and corporations are collaborating in major new projects to reorder land and water use and create industrial infrastructure over millions of ha in Africa to ensure sustained supplies of commodities and profits for markets.
Mercy Corps, a non-governmental aid agency, plans to set up a $10 million private equity fund in Ethiopia to encourage foreign investment, primarily in agriculture.
Documentary film examines the experience of Mali with large-scale farmland grabs.
TIAA-CREF's Westchester group buys 17,200 ha Cobran Station, once Australia's largest rice farm, while Sweden's Forsta AP-fonden buys the 16,000 ha Merri Meric farm near Henty.
Feronia Inc. announced that it has entered into a share subscription agreement with the African Agriculture Fund managed by Phatisa Fund Managers Limited
Controversial farmland deals in developing countries can have a negative impact on the people who live on the land, according to a new U.N. report.
New census data out this week from Uruguay’s leading ag agency shows the number of foreign investors buying Uruguay farmland and the average farm size both rose rapidly over the past decade.
We need to shift our focus away from the question of how to make large-scale land “investments” sustainable and ask the underlying question of development policy: which strategies are best suited to combat hunger and to empower marginalised groups to feed themselves?
New research from War on Want reveals that the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been using the aid budget to promote the interests of multinational food companies in Africa.
