The State has stepped up the drive to buy idle land to make available to investors, hoping to snap up vast fallow land across the Rift Valley and Coast provinces and towns near Nairobi.

Human rights workers said risks to the rural poor over such deals are significant because they are regularly evicted to make way for foreign investors.

Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.

"Leasing or giving away a huge chunk of land to foreigners, who will produce food to be shipped to their own people, and to hope that the money gained in profits will feed the local people is the height of naivete," Gathuru Mburu of ABN said

"It's very, very cheap, it's incredibly fertile, and it hasn't been overexploited. And if you take in some expertise and some machinery and some fertilizer, you should make a lot of money," says investment guru Jim Rogers of Africa's farmlands

Agribusiness and global investors are scooping up farmland. Are corporate farmers the new colonialists? asks BusinessWeek

At a two-day conference near the Moroccan capital Rabat, local officials sought to convince Gulf investors that heavy bureaucracy and complex land ownership rules, long seen as decisive obstacles, are a thing of the past.

Investment in agriculture is soaring. So, worryingly, is distrust of markets and trade.

The 450 civil society organisations taking part in a parallel forum were not won over by FAO's optimism about a code of conduct. "Land grabbing by external capital must stop," read a declaration by participants at the forum.

And now the bad news. FAO has taken a U-turn in its clear position on the race by food-importing countries and private companies to buy land overseas for domestic food and agriculture needs.

The landgrab heats up, and the neocolonialists stake their claims.

Area nearly the size of France purchased, leased for food production around the world Africa, South America, parts of Europe targeted by cash-rich, food-poor nations

The ministerial Forum on China-Africa Cooperation met in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, last week, attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and representatives of more than 300 Chinese companies.

De Jager is worried about Libya’s record in enforcing contracts with foreign companies, and the lack of social support networks. “There’s a lot of money to be made for someone with balls,” he says.

Commodity experts such as Goldman Sachs's Currie believe that land-grabbing is a good thing. He argues it will lead to more investment in agriculture. But others worry that the phenomenon will see farmers thrown off their land as more powerful forces move in.

De Jager is most excited about an impending Agri SA fact-finding mission to Libya at the invitation of President Muammar Gaddafi. "If we succeed there, we can succeed anywhere in Africa."

The plan to create a land bank brings back memories of the fury that greeted proposals by the Qatar government to buy 40,000 hectares in Tana River for agricultural purposes in exchange for $3.5 billion for the Kenya government to build a second deep-water port in Lamu.

Devinder Sharma talks about landgrabbing in the context of the world food crisis on "Democracy Now!"

"Le pari (des financiers), au départ, était un peu le même que celui du private equity dans le monde industriel : dénicher un gisement de croissance largement sous-exploité ; le faire fructifier à l'aide d'investissements considérables et un suivi attentif ; obtenir en peu de temps des rendements sans égal – on espérait jusqu'à 400% sur les friches africaines ; décrocher la timbale, non sans redistribuer un peu et rembourser les emprunts."

Swedish company Black Earth Farming (BEF) since 2006 has bought 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) of Russian farmland after the government finally allowed land to be privatised after decades of state ownership.

While Cargill says it is committed to sustainable and responsible palm oil production across its three plantations in PNG, the firm has been targeted by local and international NGOs, which claim it has polluted rivers and deceived local communities into signing agreements they do not understand.

Zimbabwe Investments Authority acting chief executive Mrs Elina Karwi said the most basic requirement towards facilitating agriculture-related FDI was making land for agriculture available.

An internal document recently posted on IRRI's website reveals that the Institute has been advising Saudi Arabia in the context of its strategy to acquire farm land overseas for its own food production.

Suicide is becoming a common reality in Barreirinhas, as families are talked into “renting” their land to the sugar cane companies.

There may emerge a situation when Ukrainians will be starving in spite of having the most fertile black earth.

Lester Brown, the president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, says even if the investor comes in wielding impressive, shiny new technology, it will be of little benefit to the small farm holder.

It's a tsunami of land deals and, as all of the experts who have studied the phenomenon have agreed, no nation is truly prepared for its implications.

Uganda's minister of agriculture literally pleaded with the agribusiness delegates at a forum in Capetown to take advantage of Uganda’s extremely advantageous deals for private investors in the agricultural sector.

An investor analysis of the case for buying up farmland

The Qatari land deal in Kenya’s Tana River Delta has been seized upon by locals who have promised to fight it – to the death, if it comes to that.