Since 2009, Whitestone (SL) Limited has managed to obtain 13 leasehold titles covering a staggering 1.34 million acres of land in the Bombali and Koinadugu Districts of Northern Sierra Leone for large-scale agricultural development.

The Singapore-based trading house paid R$255m ($129m) to acquire the Usina Açucareira Passos (UAP) mill, in which it pledged to invest a further $111.5m in the next five years to boost both cane growing and producing capacity.

The agricultural arm of the $US487 billion Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association has snapped up six farming properties from listed company PrimeAg Australia in a deal worth $36.7 million.

Foreign investors have shown real interest towards Bulgarian agriculture for the past 2-3 years. The trend has changed a bit and now different Arab countries and China are the interested ones, instead of Italy, France, etc.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is launching a call for proposal for all interested researchers and academics in its Multinational Working Group on a theme titled: “Land grabs and food sovereignty in Africa”.

This is in relation to the land grabbing issue in the municipality of Opol in Misamis Oriental, Southern Philippines

Tanzania has been advised to reduce land lease agreement to investors to below 50 years from the current 99.

South African group Illovo Sugar has pulled out of a 2.6 billion rand sugar project in Mali, largely due to political risk and also funding difficulties, and will focus on growth opportunities elsewhere in Africa.

Hassad Food Co, the agricultural investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, may invest 500m euros this year to increase food supplies for the desert emirate, the company’s chairman said.

The government is in the final stages of introducing a Land Authority whose duties, among others, will include dealing with land investments as well as establishment of a land bank and database.

According to the evaluation that the ministry did in the past few weeks, some of the large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia are not performing as expected in implementing their projects.

Concerns about land grabbing stem from a desire to hold the government accountable when the drive to make Thailand the Kitchen of the World ends up destroying ecological systems, small farmers' livelihoods, and our food security.