Nigeria is offering to lease farmland to Gulf countries seeking food security and will allow investors to export all of their produce, the head of a private Nigerian agriculture consultancy firm said on Monday.

Even with new guidelines on land leases in Africa, the deals could lead to growing problems down the road, warned Emmy Simmons, a longtime USAID official

The Africa farms operator, whose company mission is to be "the largest agricultural producer in Africa", raised the cash from both institutions and private investors

The Indonesian government's plan to develop a food estate in Papua has come in for heavy criticism for potentially marginalizing small farmers and threatening the environment.

The most unbelievably naïve reaction to the news that a mysterious Chinese company is hoping to buy up to $1.5 billion worth of dairy farms came from Federated Farmers, which said that this is an “unintended consequence” of the NZ/China Free Trade Agreemen

"The Chinese want a secure food supply, and they're coming into New Zealand to do that, by the look of it," a local farm union official says

Under the new policy, foreign land ownership would be tied to “productivity and partnership models with South African citizens,” minister Gugile Nkwinti told parliament.

Two South African asset management firms launched a 3 billion rand farmland investment fund on Wednesday that is expected to help boost agricultural development in Africa's biggest economy.

The China Jin Hui Mining Corporation - recently renamed Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings - says it has agreed to buy the Crafar family farms as well as other assets including farmland, cattle, and milkpowder production plant.

"We are launching the fund with the aim of deploying up to $1 billion for large-scale agricultural projects," Beltone told Reuters.

Small scale farming which is prevalent in rural Tanzania has no future but instead the country needs large scale commercial farmers including those from abroad to inject capital and technology, argues Professor.

The Lao side will consider a request by Mongolia to seek agricultural land of up to 10,000 hectares to produce rice and other crops. Also under consideration is a proposal by Mongolia to develop sheep farming in Laos.