Hostility to foreign investment in a sensitive border area has forced the Turkish government to shelve plans to turn a minefield along its frontier with Syria into organic farmland.

Iraq is offering Gulf investors farmland on long term lease contracts as part of a plan to restore its agriculture sector, an official said on Monday.

A flurry of announced international purchases of grain-producing acreage sparks debate about their merits

Abdullah Alireza, the Saudi minister of Commerce and Industry, talked about farming abroad in a recent visit to Seattle, where he addressed a private gathering of local business people.

M. Ndiogou Fall a exprimé lundi l'opposition "totale" du ROPPA à la vente massive des terres cultivables en Afrique

Oman has sought the assistance of the specialised UN agency, UNCTAD, in conducting a study on food security.

These arrangements are reminiscent of “banana republics” when many African countries served as plantations for European countries -- but even those did not come with such explicit restrictions and rigidities.

Cambodia has been signing deals with Kuwait and Qatar to help develop its agricultural sector. Cambodian officials, however, refuse to disclose details of the agreements, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

"At this stage, we have not sold a single square metre to the South Africans," Rigobert Maboundou, Congo Republic's minister of agriculture said over the weekend.

Il n’y a pas que les pays émergents qui ont le monopole de l’acquisition des terres à l’étranger. Le secteur privé occidental y a toute sa place.

Pergam: "J’ai débuté mes achats de terres en 2005, en les étalant sur une période de deux ans jusqu’en 2007. La majorité des terres acquises se situe en Uruguay (35 000 hectares dont 40 % sont consacrés à la culture et 60 % à l’élevage) et les autres, en Argentine, soit 10 000 hectares. J’ai effectué ses achats au travers de la société argentine Campos orientales, l’un des plus gros propriétaires terriens du pays. La plus value latente est de l’ordre de 30 % en deux ans."

If land is being unused or under-utilized in poor regions across Africa and Southeast Asia, outsourcing to capital-rich and land-poor nations could help prevent another global food crisis, but it must be fair and productive, Adam Wolfe writes for ISN Security Watch.