But human rights and environmental groups say private investment has opened Africa to exploitation through land-grabs by foreigners who are exporting crops to meet food and biofuel demands.

The Arab unrest has only doubled the efforts of Gulf countries to secure food production by buying farmland around the world, as they try to buffer themselves from the economic issues that have destabilized the region.

Over the past five years, at least two people from rural communities have been killed weekly in the struggles against land grabs, based on estimates by the Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific

In Cambodia, the Bunong people’s sacred forest became a rubber plantation as the government took their commune’s land and leased it to French firm Socfin-KCD and its Cambodian private partner.

Rural sociologist Saker El Nour discusses the complex power dynamics between main actors within land reclamation projects in Egypt.

Alfred Brownell had to flee Liberia after challenging the powerful palm oil and other extractive industries that were clearing its forests.

In India, Karuturi is being accused of sexual harassment while in Africa his struggling flower business in Kenya and Ethiopia has withered – first over tax arrears and debts and later over land deals gone wrong.

The fund house aims to capitalise on Japanese pension plans' growing interest in new investment types, including Asian fixed income and certain alternatives like farmland

Indian companies which invested in controversial deals involving hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ethiopia have found themselves out of their depth in a fast-growing African economy.

The private sector needs to double investment in the land itself to help drive agricultural development in countries that need it most, say the heads of EBRD and FAO

Gaia Vince reviews "The Land Grabbers", a new book by Fred Pearce

Rich soil, a tropical climate, and an abundance of water: the region of Gambela in the west of the country is fertile. Foreign investors are renting thousands of hectares of it to develop intensive agriculture without regard for the environment and the population, reports Le Monde.

Food prices are soaring again and the highest risks of farmland expropriation remain in Latin America, while the greatest impact of the recent rally could be on land deals in Africa.

Opponents of land grabbing say the capital, technology and expertise from large land investments are unlikely to trickle down to poor farmers.

"This workshop is the first in the world to explicitly discuss the implications of the water/food/land deals nexus," according to Martin Keulertz, Department of Geography, King’s College London

A foodstuff consortium from Middle-East countries planning to investment some Rp14 trillion through Bin Laden Group in South-East Sulawesi province, a senior adviser said here on Monday.

A foodstuff consortium from Middle-East countries planning to investment some Rp14 trillion through Bin Laden Group in South-East Sulawesi province, a senior adviser said here on Monday.

Cibus Capital intends to buy degraded land and generate revenue with regenerative agriculture, sustainable timber, carbon credits or by making it more productive before selling it.

New York-based African Agriculture Holdings went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange on December 7, 2023. This new business venture plans to operate on over 2.9 million hectares in Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal to produce animal feed for export and sell carbon credits for corporations seeking to offset their carbon emissions.

As the palm oil industry swept through Indonesia, it transformed millions of hectares of land into plantations. An opaque system supposed to improve rural livelihoods has left villagers waiting for profits — and answers.

Stop Harvard Land Grabs and the Housing Opportunities Program held a rally in Harvard’s Science Center Plaza Friday to protest the University’s previous farmland investments in Brazil.

The newly merged entity in Victoria, Australia will include more than 500 hectares of orchards, water rights, two packing houses and additional land.

By buying up US farmland and leasing it to large-scale farm machinery operators, TIAA is closing the door on policies that could revive the more diversified farming that used to underlie healthy local economies.

Little of the 5 million acres [2.02 million hectares] that Sudan's agriculture ministry estimates are in foreign hands—perhaps less than 1 in 20 acres—has been cultivated.

With its renewed promotion of what it calls the “Sunshine Industry,” the Philippine government is looking to cultivate another one million hectares of oil palm, 98 percent of which would be on the island of Mindanao.

Eritrean law blocking foreign investors from owning land and the country's desire for self-reliance makes it highly unlikely that it will fall for the neocolonial phenomenon of land grabbing.

The story may be over for the Menara Group in Aru, Indonesia. Now it’s time to look at Boven Digoel, where Menara is using the pretext of oil palm plantations to get its hands on 400,000 ha of primary forest.

Major asset managers, cowed by the cost, the risk and the controversy involved in investing in farmland, are joining forces to increase investment in the historically under-capitalised sector.

The potential for bottom-line financial damage from insecure land tenure risk range from massively increased operating costs – as much as 29 times over a normal baseline scenario, according to our modeling – to outright abandonment of an up-and-running operation.

MetLife Inc, the largest US life insurer, started a business to make agricultural loans in Brazil as insurers expand in developing markets and seek investments to boost income with interest rates near record lows.