Despite all the hypocritical calls and posturing of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for ending hunger, they have facilitated, enabled, and led the global rush for landgrabs

The US university, through its endowment fund, maintains a business chain with Brazilian companies and its subsidiaries to circumvent Brazilian law, according to a report.

Colliers International estimates about A$4 billion is currently being raised for funds to invest in Australian agriculture, including PrimeAg’s raising of A$125 million in cash for a controversial unlisted A$250 million agriculture fund with Australia’s Future Fund.

Real asset investments held by the fund include farmland and natural resources.

The Danish Agribusiness Fund and JB Equity will allow Coexca SA to double its current pork production capacity and establish a new and modern pig farm in the Maule Region of Chile

Institutional investors are poised to make grabs for large farmland assets in ­Australia, according to local and ­offshore fund managers.

A consortium of Saudi groups - comprising dairy giant Almarai, grain importer Al Rajhi and Salic, the agriculture arm of the country's Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund – buys Continental Farmers Group, which has large farming operations in Poland and the Ukraine.

Cru Investment Management PLC, a company based in Cardiff, UK, forecast a 30% return for an agricultural fund that generated profit from farms in Malawi.

Canadian super fund manager Alberta Investment Management Corp has completed contracts for its purchase of the Kimberley Meat Co beef processing facility in Western Australia’s Kimberley region that includes pastoral leases covering 475,000 ha.

Who has not recently heard a radio advertisement from one investment fund or another extolling the virtues of agricultural investments in Argentina or the Ukraine?

Pensionskassernes Administration, a Denmark-based fund that manages about $25 billion, plans to invest $370 million in farmland globally, said Jens Henrik Staugaard Johansen, a portfolio manager.

Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, a Boston-based unit of Toronto's Manulife Financial Corp., decided its first Canadian purchase would be an 1,100-acre (450-hectare) patch of land that it called "one of the most highly productive properties in the industry." The company will not disclose how much it paid, or even the exact location of the farm. But president Jeff Conrad said the company is in Canada to stay, and the fund plans to seek more land.

To give a wider swath of investors access to farmland as an asset class, Nuveen Natural Capital is opening its Global Farmland Strategy to qualified retail investors through an evergreen private-market fund.

Australian agricultural funds manager Laguna Bay Pastoral Company, which acts for North American pension funds, has recently bought eight dairy farms in the Smithton area.

Bankers and fund managers are scrambling to build up rural expertise in response to rocketing investor demand to buy entire farms as an inflation hedge.

Purchase of Australia's largest fruit grower by Driscoll's and US and Canadian private equity and pension funds includes six blueberry farms in Morocco and four berry farms in China.

Inversionistas extranjeros han acaparado en pocos años millones de hectáreas de tierras de cultivo en América Latina para producir cultivos alimentarios o agrocombustibles y exportarlos. Gran parte del dinero proviene de fondos de pensión, bancos, grupos de inversión privada de Europa y Estados Unidos, o de individuos acaudalados como George Soros, y fluye a través de mecanismos de inversión en tierras de cultivo puestos a operar mediante compañías extranjeras y locales.

Conversations held with activists from around the world in May and June webinars of 2022 make clear the need for a movement to take pensions out of financial markets - including land grabs!

Financial players are moving aggressively to snatch up lands around the world with access to water for irrigation. Their strategy is to pump as much water as they can and as fast as they can into the production of crops that reap high prices in export markets.

On the occasion of the publication of Transnational Corporations and Land Speculation in Brazil, Mary Taylor of LeftEast spoke with Fábio Pitta, Devlin Kuyek and Attila Szőcs about the broader implications of the report's findings.

While Canadian agriculture shows some promise, institutional investors have been active on the global front, particularly when it comes to farmland.

According to the USDA, the following countries are home to the largest holders of US cropland: Canada, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.

One of the world's major buyers of farmland is under fire for their involvement in land conflicts, environmental destruction and risky investments. A new report by GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos presents, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of Harvard University's controversial investments in global farmland.

As institutions and private investors show increased interest in farmland, prices are rising.

Satellite maps show the connection between Harvard and TIAA's farmland acquisitions in Brazil's Cerrado and the massive number of fires that have been burning in the region since July of this year.

While NGO pressure has had some impact on speculative investments in agricultural commodities, financial institutions still seem to be very attached to their farmland investments.

A campaign by U.S. and Brazilian activists challenging TIAA and other financial firms’ complicity in land grabs and deforestation in Brazil is scoring major victories.

Land speculation stimulates the expansion of plantations across Brazil, increasing land conflicts and displacement of campesino and Indigenous communities.

Eight years after releasing its first report on land grabbing, GRAIN publishes a new dataset documenting nearly 500 cases of land grabbing around the world.

CRR’s sustainability analysis shows that deforestation and fires have taken place on TIAA’s farmland portfolio in Brazil, enabling negative social impacts on local communities.