EBG Capital, global environmental investment boutique based in Zürich, Switzerland, is developing a membership-based voluntary reporting system on responsible farmland investing that revolves around "key performance indicators".

Wealthy Gulf Arab companies are boosting their investment in Africa's vast lands and untapped resources, marking a shift for investors who have traditionally directed their money towards assets in the United States and Europe.

The controversy regarding India’s permission to allow foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail and growing “land grab” in Africa by multinational corporations are being closely watched globally by agriculture experts, researchers and donors.

Includes presentations on large-scale farmland investment in Sudan by public and private sector representatives.

Part of the $210 million that the Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund and the Carlyle Group will invest in the Export Trading Group will be invested in Mbeya rice farms In Tanzania, where the group would cultivate rice and barley.

Oil palm giant, Wilmar Nigeria Limited, and the Rainforest Resource and Development Centre (RRDC), an environmental rights group, are currently at logger heads over a massive land grab in a rural community in Cross River State, Southern Nigeria.

Africa is regarded as the New Eldorado, and is attracting many foreign based private or public investment companies, sovereign wealth funds and even pension funds gradually. Sadly, while foreigners continue to play a major role in growth investments, African pension funds' contributions to this growth are dismal.

Agco Corp. (AGCO), the world’s third- largest farm-equipment maker, plans to invest $100 million in Africa over the next three years to capitalize on an agricultural boom and a shift to commercial farming.

Dubai-based AWGAL Investments is in advanced talks with farmers in Texas to invest in cattle farms to produce Halal-certified US beef for the GCC and MENA region.

Carlyle is part of a small group of investors that will inject $210 million into Export Trading Group, a Tanzania-based agricultural company that controls at least 60,000 hectares of farmland in Africa.

A two-decade slump in Japan’s real estate prices, an incomplete land registry and lax rules on buying forest with water rights are attracting investors led by China.

Olam is working closely with the Government of Gabon where it has developed the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil New Planting Procedure in Africa.

ROPPA, Actionaid, Oxfam and EAFF have urged Nigerian and other African leaders to guarantee transparency in the management of large-scale land transactions and freeze acquisitions which do not conform to rules, regulations and the framework of the land declaration of the African Heads of States and Government of 2009.

A slide show by GRAIN that profiles some of those who have been most actively pursuing or supporting farmland grabs around the world.

Of the $4.2 billion that the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, invested in agribusiness and forestry in the same period, just three investments – or 2 percent – had any component related to land acquisition.

Using or acquiring land for your company can indeed be a risky business and particularly when poor communities are affected.

The World Bank rejected a call by aid group Oxfam International to freeze the lender’s investment in land-intensive agricultural projects, saying such a move would not help prevent abusive practices in the purchase of acreage

African agriculture has a big investment problem: lots of private equity interest but few opportunities because most farms and companies are too small to absorb the cash or provide attractive returns.

Olam International, an India-based multinational agribusiness company, is developing an outgrower scheme on a giant 20-year, 850,000 hectare concession it has secured not far from the port of Beira, Mozambique.

We are witnessing a second scramble for Africa and other poor countries by rich nations and agribusinesses to acquire land for agricultural and biofuel purposes.

Since Jane Mendillo took over the endowment in July 2008, Harvard’s holdings of forests, farms and other natural resources in Brazil as well as in New Zealand and Romania have grown to about 10 percent of the portfolio -- more than $3 billion -- and she wants to add more.

The public debate about the ethics of investing in farmland is being ignored by serious investors who seem to have had no qualms about buying up large tracts of land in Africa reports the Financial Times.

Mawashi, Qatar’s livestock company, plans to invest in industrial agriculture and food sources outside Qatar to serve the vision and objectives of the Qatar National Food Security Programme, it was announced yesterday.

El resultado neto es una autorregulación voluntaria, la cual es ineficaz y poco fiable, y no es remedio alguno contra la perversidad de estos negocios.

New law for land restitution comes just as foreign and local billionaires such as Brazil’s Eike Batista and Colombia’s Luis Carlos Sarmiento are stepping up investments in remote parts of the nation.

From the World Bank to pension funds, efforts are under way to regulate land grabs through the creation of codes and standards. Rather than help financial and corporate elites to "responsibly invest" in farmland, we need them to stop and divest.

It is expected that the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs) will shortly be tabled in Papua New Guinea’s national parliament, but no one yet knows what it will recommend, let alone whether Peter O’Neill’s new government will act on those recommendations.

If there is an issue that is the pulse of popular discontent in Tanzania presently, then, it is land.

Villagers in Mozambique are caught between their government's need to promote agricultural development through foreign investment and to protect the rights of the citizens who depend on that land.

Academics and business figures gave a grim warning at the Resource 2012 conference, but defended the Rio+20 outcomes