The industry boom in the demand for palm oil has come at the high price of rainforest destruction, labour exploitation, and brutal land and water grabbing. The pressure from oil palm plantations has pushed communities in West Borneo on a common struggle to access clean water and continue producing food.

Eva Bande was jailed for her role as a community organizer against land grab by extractive industries on the Indonesian island, Sulawesi. Ten years on, her fight continues.

In Liberia, human rights have allegedly been violated on rubber plantations managed from Switzerland. Instead of taking up mediation offers, the Socfin group prefers to act against its critics.

Sahel Capital’s portfolio companies in Africa have cumulative 16,000 hectares of commercial farmland and aggregate additional crop from over 9,000 smallholder farmers.

A search through the World Bank's archives shines a light on why Africa's post-colonial governments failed to dismantle the plantation model and return lands to their people.

Some communities where Okomu Palm Oil Plc allegedly acquired farmland to expand its operations have cried out over an alleged forceful occupation of their land.

American pension fund giant TIAA sold its Southern Riverina farming aggregation between Wagga Wagga and Albury in southern NSW to local Australian farmers after more than a decade of ownership.

Australia’s largest dairy operation, Tasmania’s historic Van Diemen’s Land Company, is reportedly on the verge of being offloaded by its Chinese businessman owner Xianfeng Lu.

The Indonesian government says it will expand a national “food estate” program by establishing millions of hectares of new crop plantations in Sumatra and Papua. To expand the project into North Sumatra and Papua, the government is seeking out private investors; but activists say this risks a repeat of the current corporate takeover of Indigenous and community lands.

The Minister of Environment and Forestry said she would prepare the land needed for investment by the United Arab Emirates agricultural giant, Elite Agro LLC.

Agricultural investors say the COVID-19 crisis has had little impact on their business and investment intentions, with Australian agricultural land, water and business assets as appealing as ever to investors.

Indonesia has started developing a food estate to grow rice, corn and other crops. The project is expected to cover an area of 770,000 hectares (1,903,000 acres), or more than ten times the size of Singapore.

Nyéléni Newsletter's second edition fo 2020 looks at how land-related struggles have evolved over the past decades, starting with demands for agrarian reform to a more comprehensive framing.

Communities of Edo State send letter to President Buhari denouncing land grabbing and other human rights violations committed by SOCFIN and its Nigerian subsidiary Okomu Oil Palm Company PLC.

This investment marks the US pension’s first investment in farmland, and in its first in Homestead.

Indonesia's Minister of State-Owned Enterprises said that the aim was to boost food security in the country and improve the quality of domestically grown products to give them export value, with a view to exporting to countries in Africa and the Middle East.

First-ever database reveals true scope of financing of forest-risk commodity companies, amidst global rainforest fires

Thousands of families say they have been displaced from their homes to make way for commercial farms

Thousands of families are being violently evicted from their farms to make way for foreign-owned plantations in Kiryandongo, Uganda.

Elite Agro, a producer and distributor of fresh fruit and vegetables from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, will invest in Subang, West Java, Indonesia.

An analysis of the global impact of a Thai court judgement, which provides a judicial forum to farmers from Cambodia, who were victims of transnational land grabbing.

The Indonesian government is pushing ahead with a plan to grow crops on a Puerto Rico-sized area of peatlands, despite criticism from experts and a history of similar failed projects.

On the occasion of International Indigenous Peoples Day August 9, Arkilaus Kladit, a member of the Knasaimos-Tehit people in West Papua Province, Indonesia, writes about the importance of his tribe’s customary forests and the fight to protect it from logging and palm oil.

Reportage de Mongabay sur le conflit autour de la Socaplam au Cameroun

A new wave of alleged environmental and human rights abuses by Wilmar, Socfin and others sees renewed calls for action

A decade ago, the Indonesian government began to heavily promote large-scale plantation in southern Papua. An investigation recently published explored how some outside investors gained rights to the land and the fallout for the indigenous population. Children were suffering from malnutrition while agricultural commodities are exported from their ancestral land.

While palm oil companies present themselves as benevolent donors during the pandemic, communities living in and around these plantations tell another story.

The massive Socfin oil palm plantation operation is one of post-war Sierra Leone’s biggest investments and one of its most controversial.

Socfin, a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia, has been rebuked for alleged human rights violations at its plantations.

Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region and owned by the Belgian holding company Socfin.