The urgency among Gulf states to pursue farmland acquisitions has diminished as food prices have gone down and controversy has gone up. Still, Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with its plans.

“Large Scale Farming in Africa” is an international conference, which meets on 20-21 Apr 2010 in Cairo to explore upcoming investment opportunities in Africa’s agriculture sector, and discuss risk management and financing solutions.

A UAE company is seeking a 98-year lease on vast tracts of farmland in Tanzania to grow rice in order to secure food supplies for the Gulf countries.

A discussion note prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNCTAD and the World Bank Group to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue.

US government mission in Riyadh writes, "Although the idea of Saudi farms in Africa may sound farfetched, the Kingdom has for years hired foreign managers and laborers to administer its farms and other agribusinesses (e.g., most Saudi wheat farms currently have Egyptian managers)."

A top-level Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP) delegation, led by QNFSP chairman Fahd al Attiyah, will visit agricultural research institutes and meet senior US Government officials, including from the White House, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy during its week-long US programme.

A foreign company intends to clear 10 000 hectares of land in the Bwabwata National Park in northern Namibia in order to set up a large-scale irrigation scheme for crop farming

The government is working to attract local and foreign investors to finance the Jordanian agricultural mega-project in Sudan, said a senior official. "One international company has shown interest in taking part in the project so far," the minister told The Jordan Times

Peter Costello, the former treasurer of Australia, revealed Wednesday he was working with an investment fund that planned to inject US$600 million into Cambodia’s agricultural sector. The projects will cover a vast area, about 100,000 hectares.

The fund is in the process of leasing 50,000 hectares of land in Tanzania which will be complete by the end of this year and will mainly be for rice production.

Both private and public sector investors from countries such as Qatar, Libya, Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the Arab world as well as China and Korea elsewhere now hold long term rights to a total of two million feddans of arable land in Sudan, according to figures from the country’s agriculture ministry.

The Lumix AgroDirect Fund, which has been incubated since June 2008, invests in the production of soft commodities and in commodity trade finance in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.