Dubai World is reportedly trying to buy 30,000 ha of farms in New Zealand, ringing alarm bells there Friday.

Federated Farmers is urging farmers to conduct due diligence after reports that a Maori trust, with reputed backing from Dubai World, has been contracted to buy 28 farms in Southland

The Maori trust has contracted to buy nearly 30,000ha of dairy, sheep, beef and deer farms throughout Southland, but some sellers have raised queries ranging from delays confirming the sales contracts to deposits not being paid as expected.

New Zealand needs to tighten its rules around overseas investment as China and the Gulf States go on a world-wide shopping spree for prime land, said Green Party Co-Leader Dr Russel Norman.

What do the Berlin Wall and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) have in common?

“We are now looking very seriously into Sudan,” said Zouhair Eloudghiri, chief executive officer of Savola Foods Co., a unit of Saudi Arabia’s second-largest publicly traded food producer, Savola Al-Azizia United Co.

Dalam hal ini, dapat dikatakan masa pengesahan “perampasan tanah” (land grabbing), ketika pengusaha besar lokal dan asing datang atas mandat pemerintah untuk bersaing dengan petani gurem.

The Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI) explains how the government's food estate plan benefits companies and threatens farmers.

Main basse sur les terres agricoles : le cas de l'Afrique et le cas du Brésil.

"Hassad [Food] has innovated by considering investments in overseas agribusinesses rather than only purchasing land in countries with questionable property rights, and where the indigenous population may not benefit from such purchases," writes the US embassy in Doha

The head of state at the last session of the Council of Foreign Investors informed that China had requested to lease 1 million hectares of Kazakh farmland for cultivation of rape and soya. According to A. Evniev, "It is not a lease, it is a question of joint manufacture. In this case, it is soya and later it will be corn and rape."

Sudan's minister of state for investment said yesterday he expects investments of $6-7 billion in the country in 2010, adding that Africa's largest nation is seeing increased interest in its agricultural sector.