Let us focus on the real issue that our legislators should be grasping: how do we keep farmers operating and attract farmers to own the land they work, and not become peasants on land rented from institutional investors, domestic or foreign.

Pension funds try to adopt a sustainability perspective when investing in farmland abroad, but there is not much consensus on what it means and how to measure it.

Storebrand, the largest private pension fund in the Nordic region, is divesting its shares in eleven of the twelve palm oil companies in which it is invested.

Transport costs have made the country’s agriculture industry uncompetitive. But new infrastructure projects should transform the opportunities some have seen in land values.

This year could see a surge in interest in farmland from investors with very little experience in this complicated asset class, reports Euromoney

A poorly performing bonds environment has led AP Pension to set up its own special agricultural investment fund and buy its first farm.

Palm oil is cheap because it’s produced by a global industry built on land grabbing, human rights abuses and environmental devastation.

Last year, CPPIB launched its agriculture investment program which is initially focusing on farmland opportunities in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is buying a portfolio of Saskatchewan farms, with the $128-million purchase of Assiniboia Farmland LP.

Interest in farming from a new class of institutional investors — including hedge, endowment, pension, private equity and sovereign wealth funds — has surged.

Global fund managers and some of the world's largest pension funds have bought more than $1.5 billion of agricultural land in Australia over the past three years.

Late on Wednesday night an Australian trust backed by Swiss, Danish and US fund managers agreed to pay more than $200 million for 12,000 hectares of almond groves in northern Victoria.

Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch investors in Mozambique land grab: powerful new documentary gives a compelling visual portrait of how investment by private financial players can undermine food security and human rights in developing countries.

As the world’s population swells beyond seven billion and emerging markets’ appetite for food grows, Canadian institutions are getting increasingly hungry for agribusiness and farmland acquisitions abroad.

Food companies in the North have always purchased land in the global South to produce export crops. What is different today is the unprecedented scale of these purchases and the kinds of crops that are being grown.

The returns on investments in South African farmland consistently outstrip those of local and international equities, bonds and real estate, says Futuregrowth Asset Management, the venture capital arm of Old Mutual.

Australia's Murray Goulburn Co-operative says it plans to bypass traditional bank lending by forging alliances with international investors to support dairy farms.

Land reform movements, organizations of indigenous peoples, small farmers, and other citizens are responding to the increased sacking of land and other natural resources throughout the global South.

Among the estimated 3.7 million workers in the industry are thousands of child laborers and workers who face dangerous and abusive conditions. Debt bondage is common, and traffickers who prey on victims face few, if any, sanctions from business or government officials.

Black River Asset Management, owned by food giant Cargill, is targeting $400m for its 2nd ag-focused investment fund. So far, the bulk of the financing has come from a US teachers' pension fund.

European banks, pension funds and private equity funds have given financial assistance worth more than €450 million to Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby, responsible for environmental degradation and violations of national regulations in Liberia.

While NGO pressure has had some impact on speculative investments in agricultural commodities, financial institutions still seem to be very attached to their farmland investments.

Farmland has become the darling of alternative investing, sending hedge funds and wealthy investors into bidding wars for plots of land once deemed ordinary. And it is not just big money getting in on the game. From Stockholm to Chicago to Vancouver, ordinary investor money is pouring into fields around the world.

A Chinese company isn’t buying Smithfield. A shell company based in Cayman Islands is. Instead of a story about “China buying up the world”, this turns out to be a story of a precarious leveraged buyout deal by some large global private equity firms looking to borrow their way to a fortune.

Dutch pension funds say they will remain invested in Wilmar International due to their successful efforts to engage with the controversial palm-oil company accused by many of land grabbing

A multi-million dollar “ethical” plantation development in northwestern Mozambique - the initiative of a clutch of Scandinavian faith-based organizations - has faced alleged acts of sabotage by the very people it was designed to assist, illustrating the divisions between foreign benefactors and local communities.

Friends of the Earth is running an ethical pension campaign to encourage investors to ask their providers if they invest in land grabbing activities. Emma Websdale spoke with campaigner Kirtana Chandrasekaran to discuss why it is such an important issue.

Sweden’s SEK227.3bn (€26.7bn) state buffer fund Andra AP-fonden (AP2) has been accused of a lack of transparency and snapping up cheap agricultural land in Brazil by campaign group Swedwatch. AP2 denies the allegations.

A new Swedwatch report shows a lack of transparency and inadequate auditing of ethics and environmental impacts in AP2’s investment in farmland in Brazil. For business reasons, the investment is surrounded by a high level of secrecy, which makes scrutiny from the outside impossible.

The Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act was first passed in 1980 by Congress to limit foreign control over US farmland. Obama now wants things changed.