"Saudi Arabia is increasingly looking for agriculture investment opportunities abroad, mostly in Africa," reports the US mission in Riyadh in May 2009

Food commodity prices remain near historic highs. Food riots destablised countries around the world last year – more than the financial crisis – and may well return. If food was ever a soft policy issue before, it now rivals oil as a basis of power and economic security.

The Egyptian government has been allocated up to 2 million acres of land in Uganda to grow wheat and corn for its domestic market

Japan will spearhead a drive at the Group of Eight summit to prevent "farmland grabbing" in developing countries and encourage responsible investing in agriculture.

Japan is to propose introducing a set of principles to ensure smooth investment in agriculture in developing countries at a Group of Eight summit in Italy in July, a foreign ministry official said on Tuesday, in a move to limit 'land-grabbing'.

Slater reckons shortages of soft commodities and the likelihood of rising inflation make farmland an excellent investment, not least in Brazil where Agrifirma is located.

The state government is welcoming foreign investors wishing to commercialise padi planting in Sabah in order to increase rice production in the state, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Yahya Hussin said.

Since details emerged of Saudi Arabia’s plans to ensure supplies of wheat, rice, corn, soya beans and alfalfa through overseas agricultural investments, officials have insisted that they intended the programme to be private-sector led.

Alarmed by exporters’ trade restrictions, food importing countries have realised that their dependence on the agricultural market makes them vulnerable not only to a surge in prices but, more crucially, to an interruption in supplies.

African countries are giving away vast tracts of farmland to other countries and investors almost for free, according to a report published by IIED, IFAD and FAO

The Sudanese capital state of Khartoum has $45 billion worth of agricultural projects that are available for investors, Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Sunday, quoting a senior official. One of the projects is worth $500 million and consists of tendering 2,100 sq km of farmland west of Omdurman.

A Norwegian company, ScanFuel Ltd., says its Ghanaian unit has contracted about 400,000 hectares of land, with up to 60 percent reserved for biofuel production, “not less” than 30 percent for food production and the remainder for biodiversity buffer zones.