Land acquisitions abroad are the only viable response, Mohammed Raouf, program manager of environment research at the Gulf Research Center, and others say.

Some experts believe that the emphasis should be on overseas agricultural investments as well as a boost in trade relationships, due to the unavoidable handicaps to domestic agriculture.

Lured by soaring food prices, corporations - both domestic and foreign - have been snapping up land in this fertile region the size of France, replacing inefficient Soviet-style collective farming with modern farming techniques and economies of scale.

“Foreigners who come here get astonished at the gleaming black earth,” said Viktor Karnushin, head of a local subsidiary of Sweden’s Black Earth Farming corporation, one of the biggest foreign players in Russian farming.

GCC countries face growing constraints in agricultural capacity. Structural factors are exacerbating pressures on food prices. A new report from Standard Chartered supports additional investment in agriculture.

Three major multi-billion Shariah-based projects to boost infrastructure, agriculture and hospitality sectors in GCC and elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia were launched here yesterday.

A food mega-project planned for a vast area in the Papuan district of Merauke is causing concern that indigenous people's land will be taken and their livelihoods destroyed.

One issue reportedly delaying UAE investment in Pakistan is the Gulf state appearing to want “blanket exemption” from Islamabad’s agricultural export policies.

There is growing interest in agricultural land, which Bramdean Asset Management is looking at and believes has huge potential

The Rivers State Government has reiterated its resolve to create an enabling environment to enhance rice production and processing, as well as promote and protect other agricultural business interests in the state.

The Government is considering the purchase of farmland worth US$500 million (Dh1.8 billion) in Pakistan as part of a strategy to lower food import costs.

The Moroccan government has pursued a strategy of leasing state-farms previously under the management of Société de Développement Agricole (SODEA). A large number of bids were made by agricultural businesses from France, Egypt, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

A military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.

In 2006, Beijing and Maputo signed a memorandum of understanding concerning the creation of a massive agricultural project in the Zambezi river valley area.

Hundreds of farmers in Northwest China are expected to toil the soil in the neighboring Republic of Kazakhstan next spring. "We have signed a deal with Kazakhstan to rent 7,000 hectares of land in Alakol county for use for 10 years," a local agricultural official said.