Investors are plowing money into Russia’s open lands to resuscitate the long-neglected farm sector and supply a world in ever greater need of food.

Kuwait is eyeing Cambodian farmland for investment in agriculture to produce food supply for the state, a minister said yesterday.

Kuwait’s premier has advised Prime Minister Hun Sen to turn Cambodia into an agricultural powerhouse to speed the Kingdom’s development.

A food mega-project planned for a vast area in the Papuan district of Merauke is causing concern that indigenous people's land will be taken and their livelihoods destroyed.

MAP services group’ is in the process of setting up a fund to develop model dairy and livestock farm in Pakistan. The fund will focus on private equity, SME funding and development as well as donor facilitation of project. The company plans to have 10 model farms in Pakistan by the end of 2010.

As other countries have pushed their industrial bases thousands of miles offshore in search of resources and labor, China is doing the same thing with agriculture, expanding as far away as Africa in its effort to feed its people.

Ahmed Al Sadhan, General Manager of the National Office for Industrial Strategies, at the Ministry of Commerce, stressed a desire to maintain a low profile on the feasibility study, for fear that target countries might inflate the cost of farm-land in anticipation of investment.

South Korean-based PT Agro Enerpia Indonesia will invest US$2 billion in maize plantations in the Buol district of Central Sulawesi, a regional government spokesman said.

Gulf banks and businessmen were yesterday urged to invest less money in the real estate sector and turn to food industries.

Pakistan has reportedly offered Saudi Arabia a large amount of acres of agricultural land in return for oil. Egypt is also said to have offered both Saudi Arabia and the UAE the opportunity to purchase farmland. Even Bahrain, the smallest economy in the GCC, has started exploring buying farmland in southeast Asian nations, notably Thailand and the Philippines.

Dr Kayan Jaff, the FAO’s regional chief, has warned that only a multi-billion dollar investment in agriculture will curb soaring supermarket prices — urging governments to buy up farmland in regions like the Horn of Africa and Asia.

What’s with farming these days? The humble, even if slightly romantic vocation, is attracting a new breed of participants as investing in farmland and agriculture becomes the latest fad in the world of investments.