The recent much-publicised plan of South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Logistics to lease a reported 1.9 million hectares of prime land in Madagascar to cultivate maize for export back to South Korea has fallen through.

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.

Le groupe sud-coréen Daewoo Logistics pourrait renoncer à son projet de plantation de maïs et de palmiers à huile à Madagascar. L'information a été annoncée au cours d’une conférence de presse donnée mardi par la compagnie à son siège à Séoul, capitale de la Corée du Sud.

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.

South Korea's Daewoo Logistics said on Tuesday it might delay its massive corn plantation plan in Madagascar due to political instability and weak commodity prices, a move that could signal the first withdrawal of major foreign investment from the Indian Ocean island nation.

When violence erupted in the island nation of Madagascar two weeks ago, few would have guessed that South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Logistics was partly to blame.