“The EU is effectively subsidizing land grabbing in Cambodia by giving preferential treatment to companies that have produced goods on stolen land,” says David Pred, BABC executive director

The eDiscussion will take place from 13 September to 8 October and is open to all.

Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said his ministry received a proposal to make use of 500,000 hectare areas for the 1.6-million-hectare food and energy estate projects planned in Merauke, Papua.

As foreign investors in Russia are all too aware, there is a perennial conflict within the country’s political elite on how to balance the need for foreign investment and outside technology with an impulse to maximize state control over sectors that carry outsized economic or social significance.

"I have asked the USDA if Chinese investors could buy farmland in the US and I got positive answers. In this way, Chinese grain price could escape the control of international grain enterprises," says Zheng Fengtian.

Foreign investors are increasingly focusing on opportunities in Turkish agriculture, according to Mehmet Erdo?an, chairman of Sezon Pirinç, a rice company

The World Bank appears deeply torn. While the report endorses the Bank's open-door globalisation agenda, the sub-text dissents on every page.

Egypt will soon offer to lease, for 49 years, 50,000 feddans [21,000 ha] for agri-business projects in North Sinai, the irrigation minister said -- but only to domestic investors.

"I know you will think why should President Obama meddle in the affairs of other countries," writes Devlinder Sharma. "I agree, but at least he can stop the American agribiz and finance companies from indulging in offshore farmland grab."

A CTA Rural Development Briefing in Central Africa on “Land access, land acquisitions and rural development: New challenges, new opportunities” will be held in Yaoundé, Cameroun, on 27-28th September 2010

While the Bank warns of a lack of transparency and the potential harm to poor people, it ultimately endorses the land grabs in the name of productivity and sound investment.

In a 164-page report that actually endorses the practice of the sale of vast tracts of agricultural land to foreign buyers, the global lender nevertheless frets over the fall-out of northern legislation that makes investors view every farm, jungle and meadow in the third world the same way they view an oil field, says the EU Observer