GRAIN says the World Bank's much anticipated report on the global farmland grab is both a disappointment and a failure.

The creation this week of the 'Save our Farms' campaign to block foreign ownership of New Zealand farm land has fired up a debate that needs to be had.

The 2010 edition of the Africa Progress Panel report, produced under the chairmanship of Mr Kofi Annan, addresses land grabbing in Africa.

In the Philippines, a land lease hotspot like Cambodia or Laos, a series of high-profile deals has clashed with long-running demands for agrarian reform including land redistribution.

To be brutally honest, mutual interest is the opposite of what investor countries are looking for

"We are seeing a land grab bigger than anywhere else in the world, and it has attracted a mighty cast of characters," says Kingsmill Bond, chief strategist at Troika Dialog, a Moscow brokerage firm.

Stephen Marks looks at the latest rush by China and countries in the middle east to sign lease agreements in poor countries for agricultural production, and what this trend means in terms of food security and access to arable land for local populations.

Deputy for agriculture and fisheries to the coordinating minister for economic affairs Bayu Krisnamurthi earlier said that the government had given a priority to a regulation pertaining to the development of food estates to support Indonesia`s food security. According to him, the economic affairs coordinating ministry was drafting a regulation, 90 percent of which had been completed.

Since 1999, The Ingleby Company has bought about 17 farms. The company runs just under 20,000ha of land with 130,000 stock units, most of which are sheep and cattle.

The world's leading private equity fund has just invested in Hasfarm Holdings, a flower export giant in Da Lat, Vietnam, marking a new step in the investment trend in the agricultural and food technology sector in Vietnam.

Elaia, the agricultural platform of Atitlan, acquires Ecosac, a Peruvian company specializing in grape and canned pepper production with 2,500 hectares currently under production and another 2,500 in reserve.

Farmland LP buys climate-resilient land, gets it certified organic, selects profitable crops, and picks up the tab on equipment. Then it rents fields to local farmers who want to increase production.

The founder of debt ladden Chinese property developer Shimao Group Holdings has put a Western Australia cattle station portfolio almost as big as Belgium on the market with an asking price of about $250 million.

The Beligian retail company Colruyt Group has recently started buying its own farmland to produce foods for its supermarkets.

Frontal Trust develops strategic alliances with local agribusiness operators with the objective of structuring investment vehicles to fund their growth plans, and connecting capital to investment opportunities in Latin America farmland.

A new report on the tax strategy of agribusiness corporation Socfin reveals how multinational companies can shift profits from countries where they produce commodities in Africa and Asia to tax havens like Switzerland.

Birdwood, based in Asunción and managed by JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs alum, has hand-picked a 140,000-hectare, contiguous, world-class beef and grains aggregation in a zone of the Paraguayan Chaco.

Civil Society Organzation from various regions in Indonesia and International letter contains urgent concern for the safety of land and human rights defenders impacted by the Korindo Group and POSCO International, Indonesia.

IDI releases new resource to equip communities and the activists who support them with information that can help them protect their rights when their lands are threatened by projects funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has acquired Broetje Orchards, one of the largest privately-owned apple orchard operations in the U.S.

Elite Foods CEO says his South African company wishes to take advantage of the Northern Province's huge expanse of water and land.

BrasilAgro, which is 40% owned by Argentina's Cresud, continues to clear land on its Chaparral farm in Correntina, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia.

Farm and asset management company Gunn Agri announced it has finalized the acquisition of Abingdon Downs, a 484,000-hectare breeding property in Queensland, Australia from the Keough Cattle Company, for an undisclosed sum.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency says the project will advance sustainable agricultural development in the northeastern region of Mato Grosso State and bring benefits to Japanese and global food security

Communiqué from RIAO DRC denouncing recent threats and intimidation against communities and NGOs in the oil palm plantation areas of the Canadian company Feronia.

On ‘Food Sovereignty Day’ La Via Campesina launches publication that calls for a massive change in the current agro-food systems

Joe Lewis, the owner of football team Tottenham Hotspur, is the ultimate owner of the AA Trust, which has just converted 59 of 160 Convertible Notes into fully paid ordinary shares in AACo.

Chinese-backed company Harmony Beef and Cattle is buying the Earl of Stradbroke's grand rural property Mt Fyans in the Western District of Victoria for about $34 million.

Australia's business and legal communities are calling for a simplification of the policy under which there are six different monetary thresholds for prospective foreign investors in agricultural land to overcome.

Global investors have spent more than $90 billion buying agricultural lands the size of Finland in deals criticized by rights groups for displacing small farmers, according to research published on Tuesday.