Will Malaysia be emulating other nations by looking abroad to plant staple crops like rice, or rear cows, goats, chicken and fish to secure a sustainable food supply?

David Hallam explains how international investments in agriculture can be good news if the objectives of land purchasers are reconciled with the investment needs of developing countries.

The water industry and agriculture are emerging as major new asset classes for Islamic financial institutions, especially in the field of sustainable investments.

India, once the colonial jewel of Britain's empire, has been accused of 'neo-colonialism' in Africa where its business people have joined a race with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to buy up agricultural estates and take advantage of cheap labour.

While ordinary Canadians watch their pensions and jobs evaporate in the global economic mess, those who brought us the crisis have found a new profit-making toy. It’s land-grabbing, 21st-century style. Canada is not being spared.

Trade minister Stockwell Day said that Canada stands to benefit from the Saudi Kingdom’s overseas agricultural investment initiative and that the Canadian Parliament is studying it.

Environmentalists — who have dubbed it the “land-grabbers bill” — fear the new rules will offer a carte blanche for those wanting to make money by destroying the Amazon.

When people are using lands under customary tenure arrangements, there is an inequality in bargaining power where no formal titles to the land exist if a foreign investor is interested in purchasing the land.

Together with GMO, the land grab wave that is spreading across Africa and other countries in the "developing world" should be brought to the attention of all interested Ghanaians. It is important for Ghanaians to avoid falling for it.

The Leopard Cambodia Fund has set aside $1.8m to establish Cambodia Plantations, a Singapore-based company which will serve as an offshore finance vehicle for agricultural investments in central Cambodia. The drawdown will fund the establishment of a subsidiary that is in the process of obtaining a land concession in the province of Kompong Chhnang for rice cultivation.

I wonder why the people (and more importantly the political leaders and elite) of the African and Latin American countries are not opposing and driving these companies out from within their national borders. The reason is simple. The rich and elite of every country is the real beneficiary of the process of globalisation.

Latin America is surely one of the most attractive places for China to invest in arable land and food industries.