After years of competing for overseas oil and mines, India and China are silently scouring the world for their next great need: farmland to grow food.

The outsourcing of food has suddenly become a very big business. Richard Ferguson, a Europe-based analyst for the Japanese investment bank Nomura, calls what is going on now the “third great wave” of outsourcing after manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s and information technology in the 1990s and 2000s. In his exhaustive 319-page report, he talks about the future of farming in terms of 1 million-hectare operations.

Agricultural investment in Sudan by Arab countries looking to guarantee supplies of staples such as wheat for their people will account for up to 50 percent of all investment in the country from 2010

Private equity used to stay away from anything to do with agriculture, put off by the uncontrollable risks of bad climate and natural disasters. And yet in the last three years some big funds have been launched in the agribusiness space, and they are busy trying different ways of mitigating the risks.

Neo-colonialists are buying up agricultural land in Africa – and local farmers could be crushed unless there are international rules to protect them.

The Caribbean is still struggling to develop a new agricultural model. While small scale agriculture and land ownership continues to have a deep rooted and emotional appeal, large scale farming with its echo of servitude–in the Anglophone Caribbean at least–remains far from attractive.

A delegation from Saudi Arabia is set to arrive in Manila next week to explore possible investments in the country's farm sector

The Global Land Grab: A Human Rights Approach seminar will analyze the global land grab through a human rights lens, assessing the trade and investment agreements that are enabling the trend, as well as its likely effects on small farmers, indigenous peoples and food sovereignty.

Rattled by last year's food price crisis, governments and corporations have signed a slew of deals to lease or buy arable land in cash-strapped nations, mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The Ernst & Young office in Addis is currently advising several investors from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, who are investing tens of millions of dollars in the agro industry in Ethiopia.

Abandonner les agrocaburants, soutenir l’agriculture familiale plutôt que l’agro-business, empêcher des fonds spéculatifs de s’acaparer des terres, relocaliser la production alimentaire… Telles sont quelques-unes des doléances de la Confédération paysanne et d’associations de solidarité internationale auprès des futurs députés européens.

'Land Grab: The Race for the World's Farmland' is the title of the conference, focusing on the recent race to secure large areas of arable farmland around the world.