Saudi Arabia's Hail Agricultural Development Co (Hadco) said on Monday it would look at investing in Turkey and Kazakhstan after moving into Sudan under a government plan to ensure steady food imports.

With land prices falling, now is a good time for the UAE to acquire farmland in other countries, in order to strengthen food security, a senior official says.

Saudi private sector company Hail Agricultural Development Co (Hadco) has picked Sudan for its first investment in farming abroad under a Saudi government scheme to ensure steady food imports, it said.

There is this saying common in most tribal vernaculars and other languages which simply states that where there is smoke there is likely to be fire.

A number of Kuwaiti businesses have expressed an interest in investing in agriculture in Laos, according to a Lao company owner.

The International Financial Corp, the World Bank’s private-sector lender, said on Thursday it will invest $75 million in a new agribusiness fund to increase global food supplies. IFC said it had joined forces with Altima Partners, which manages the $625 million Altima One World Agricultural Fund, to create a fund to invest in farming operations and agricultural land in emerging market countries.

FAO believes that the time has come to give deep thought to creating the conditions to ensure the success of international ‘joint-ventures’ for food production

A South Korean company said Thursday it may delay a controversial project to develop a huge area of Madagascar for farmland due to political unrest in the Indian Ocean nation."We may have to delay our investment in Madagascar mainly due to political instability there," Shin Dong-Hyun, managing director of the financing and strategic planning department of Daewoo Logistics, told AFP.

Daewoo Logistics Corp. expressed wariness yesterday over growing political unrest in Madagascar and hoped that the situation would not affect a massive farm project it is pushing in the Indian Ocean nation. “It may be a bit of a dangerous investment,” Shin Dong-hyun, a Daewoo Logistics official, told Yonhap News Agency, commenting on spreading anti-government protests in Madagascar.

A group of Saudi businessmen have planned to invest over SR1 billion [USD267m] in agricultural projects in Ethiopia and Sudan on a staggered schedule within next few years.

Chinese companies are lining up to invest in African agriculture, but governments like Senegal must do more to limit the risks for investors, a veteran Chinese investor said.

Food import anxiety is spawning an entirely new genre of trade agreements as food-importing countries seek to buy or lease large blocks of land to farm in other countries, writes Lester Brown.