The Gulf countries remain 'highly vulnerable' to commodity price volatility on international markets, as the recent surge in sugar prices shows.

Hassad Food, owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, will buck the Gulf Arab trend of buying farmland abroad to secure food supplies and consider taking stakes in agricultural companies instead, its chairman said.

Foras Investment Company conducted a pre-feasibility study on rice plantation in Mauritania in 2008. The aim of the study is to sieze the opportunity of setting up a rice farm on 2000 hectares in Rosso area.

To be brutally honest, mutual interest is the opposite of what investor countries are looking for

Thailand's Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry has not found evidence to confirm claims that foreigners are using Thai nominees to buy farmland in Thailand.

Emami Biotech's project has already begun at Awash Sebat Kilo some 250 km east of the capital Addis Ababa growing Jatropha, sunflower, castor, pulses and various herbs at a cost of $24 million.

Despite the risks and the Madagascan setback, Korea's scramble for agricultural land abroad will continue.

The wheat farms in Sudan & Uganda are not Egypt’s first foray into overseas farming — the government operates a corn farm in Zambia, a rice farm in Niger, a vegetable farm in Tanzania and plans 14 more farms across Africa — but they are significant because they are among the first efforts to address wheat scarcity after the instability of 2008.

It seems that the mere mention of foreigners about to snap up our farmland to grow rice will make our blood of patriotism boil instantly. Yet, the same hostile attitude has never been detected from the Thai public or bureaucracy when big swathes of farmland are bought by Thai businessmen in order to transform them into housing or industrial estates.

The government was asked on Saturday to immediately stop all land deals being negotiated with foreign governments, investors, US seed company Monsanto and other agro-chemical companies promoting genetically-modified crops, especially BT cotton.

A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

Small scale farmers from twelve African countries have decided to fight back amid ongoing threats of them being swallowed by large estates.