The problems of securing for women the right to land tenure require more effort and nuanced attentiveness than is likely to happen in the face of a juggernaut of efforts to outsource food production by countries like Saudi Arabia and for bio-fuel production for countries like South Korea.
Rabobank announces that more than 90 investment funds have emerged that are investing directly in overseas farmland.
In addition to being a key player in the Saudi poultry business, Hadco produces olives, wheat, dates and grass fodder. Almarai has its own cattle farms.
Asian nations want to secure their energy needs, while Gulf Arab states are targeting investments in farmland to secure their food supply.
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.
