The Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food today published the Independent Study report on the sugarcane project of the Geneva based firm Addax Bioenergy.

Jean Claude Gandur’s ethanol project in Sierra Leone comes at a sensitive time, with concerns being raised of exploitation of developing countries for resources.

The global financial crisis may have hit tax-effective agribusiness schemes hard, but the prospects of the small group of companies that survived are anything but gloomy. "We're actually tapping into the new GFC, which is the global food crisis," says Wayne Overall, executive director of agribusiness managed investment scheme operator Almond Investors Limited

Iowa agribusiness investor Bruce Rastetter is leading a project to turn as much as 800,000 acres [324,000 hectares] of land in the east African country of Tanzania into a massive grain-and-livestock operation.

It is true that many of the land deals are not structured to benefit local communities but it is wrong to claim that such investments will only help promote food exports at the expense of local needs, says Calestous Juma.

The Swedish National Pension Fund is teaming up with US institutional investor TIAA-CREF to buy farmland in Australia.

Indonesia's food estate policy that has encouraged foreign investment in agriculture may not prevent potential food crises, activists say.

The mad scramble for Africa. Critics say the financial firms that helped cause the global recession by inflating the real estate bubble -- are back. And this time they're being accused of pulling the same tricks with the world's food supply.

The first Zambian company to float on Aim is planning to join the market in a listing which will help it raise £34million to buy 123,550 acres of prime farming land in Zambia.

The escalation of violence around the north-south border in the run-up to Sudan’s big divide has sparked fears of a new civil war, but experts contend that the issue is more about land and water rather than oil.

A new report published this week claims farmers in Africa are being driven off their traditional lands to make way for vast new industrial farming projects backed by European hedge funds seeking profits and foreign countries looking for cheap food.

Most of the current and past conflicts over Dominion Farms’ development of the Yala swamp can be traced back to three structural problems: poor communication, cultural and social misunderstanding and political involvement.