The recent increasing land acquisitions by transnational corporations (TNCs) is causing conflicts among farmers, pastoralists and other land users in Ghana, and have the potential of leading to the loss of arable land by smallholders, reveals a study.

Ounkeo pioneered talkback radio in Laos, giving his listeners a rare chance to voice their opinions on the airwaves, but discussion on the sensitive subject of corporate land grabs appears to have persuaded officials that enough was enough.

Paraguay Resist Social Forum recorded in its first day of debates, denounces against government attacks on journalists, public and alternative media and land grabbing by multinational corporations.

Adecoagro, which owns nearly 300,000 hectares of land in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, said it had sold its San Jose site for $1,212 per hectare, compared with a purchase price of $85 per hectare in 2002.

Britain is the world’s biggest centre for private land grabbers.

The Nevada US firm Farm Lands of Africa has, after two years, accelerated its development into an agricultural producer by buying a rice-to-eucalyptus group in the Republic of Guinea with a landbank of 220,000 hectares, an area nearly the size of Luxembourg.

If there is an issue that is the pulse of popular discontent in Tanzania presently, then, it is land.

"Today, all patriotic Africans are weeping when they see how African governments are giving out African lands, dispossessing the African people of their ancestral land, for practically next to nothing, in the name of attracting foreign investors!", writes Abba Mahmood

The sharpest tensions in the countryside hinge on alleged land grabs, in which the government and private developers are forcing farmers to leave their property for little or no compensation.

Savills international farmland market report for 2012

Over the last two months, the price of corn has been climbing. On July 19th, it exceeded $8 per bushel for the first time, taking the world into a new food price terrain. With heat and drought still smothering the Corn Belt, we may well see more all-time highs in coming weeks as the extent of crop damage becomes clearer.

Joe Azelby, JP Morgan’s head of Global Real Assets, is seeing a structural shift in many institutional portfolios toward real assets, including farmland.