“Buying farms is not a bad thing,” Panos Konandreas, acting director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Geneva, said in a telephone interview. “If you are like Saudi Arabia and have all the resources in the world, you can help farms optimize their strategies and there will be more production.”

Investors in Saudi Arabia, one of the world's top rice buyers, are looking for joint ventures with Thai partners to invest in rice farming in Thailand and Africa.

The Jordanian Prime Minister Nader Dahabi said his country will cultivate lands allocated for his country in Sudan as part of his government strategy to deal with rising prces of food items on the international market.

Talks aimed at acquiring large agricultural plots of land in Pakistan were not expected to yield results any time soon, a senior Pakistani government official has said.

Calyx Agro is a newly created venture focused on the acquisition, development, rental and operation of agricultural land located in South America with an emphasis on Brazil.

Alpcot Agro is currently in control of 128,800 hectares of arable land in Russia and wants to control 200,000 hectares by the end of 2008.

UAE wants to boost investment in Egypt’s agricultural sector in the light of the current rise in prices of commodities worldwide.

Landkom has leased 165,000 acres from thousands of landowners in Ukraine and will reap its first big harvest this year.

Dans un souci de reprendre le contrôle sur son approvisionnement alimentaire, les autorités étudient actuellement la mise en place d’une politique incitative visant à encourager les entreprises agricoles chinoises à acheter et louer des terres cultivables en grande quantité, plus particulièrement en Afrique et en Amérique du sud.

China's fast-growing farm corporations may be the next wave of Chinese investors in Australia, joining their already influential mining comrades.

Saudi government moves agriculture abroad by investing in farming of staple commodities in Thailand, Brazil, India and other countries. This move represents a classic case of “absolute advantage” economy.

Dubai-based Abraaj Capital, one of the Middle East’s largest private equity companies, has been quietly buying farmland in Pakistan as part of plans by the United Arab Emirates to increase food security and to damp inflation.