The government is in the final stages of introducing a Land Authority whose duties, among others, will include dealing with land investments as well as establishment of a land bank and database.

After three years of discussions, the UN has agreed a document meant to protect local populations against land grabbing.

Warren Buffett said yesterday that over the next 100 years, farmland will beat gold, which surged to a record in 2011 after increasing more than sixfold in the past decade.

The Pakistan government should table a bill in the parliament before proposing further selling of agricultural lands in order to have a legitimate regulatory mechanism in place, says economist.

"The CFS is expected to adopt the VGs in May. Then for part two: laws with an enforcement mechanism. National laws, because that is where it really counts. And multilateral rules, too, to discipline foreign investors," write IATP.

Two MIDROC-affiliated companies, largely owned by the Saudi tycoon Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi, are Saudi Star Agricultural Plc and Horizon Plantations Plc. Both offered tens of millions of Birr to acquire state-owned plantations last week.

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.

Article details the diversity of outcomes and arrangements falling under the blanket term ‘land grab,’ examining transfers of ownership and control of land and the implications of political processes as reflected in land policy

Oakland Institute speaks about the findings of their latest round of in-depth research into land grabs in Africa.

Report from FIAN on the international conference against land grabbing which took place in Mali in November 2011

In the past three days, peasants, pastoralists and indigenous peoples have come together from across the world for the first time to share with each other their experiences and struggles against land-grabbing.

While certain provisions in contracts can contain sensitive commercial information that may require a level of confidentiality, it does not justify keeping all information about large-scale agricultural projects outside the public domain.

SNS Impact Investing interviewed Dr. George Owusu from the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana in Accra.

The government has not presented satisfactory and truthful explanations about its actions, let alone credible defense of its role as agency and facilitator of the abominable practices of farmland grabbing.

World food security fears may be driving the foreign rush to buy Australian farmland and agribusinesses, says Nationals' leader, Warren Truss.

Modern machineries of all sorts, owned and run by agri-companies, are turning the soils inside out, destroying forests and beginning to pollute the environment to get more production.

A new class of farmers is on the rise in Ukraine. Three articles about the situation with foreign investors taking control of the country's farmlands.

Developed nations attempt to secure supplies of food and biofuels to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the food and energy security of their populations, Khadija Sharife writes in this week’s Pambazuka News

The Bangkok Post asked two prominent figures to discuss the pros and cons of foreign farmland ownership.

The terms of farmland deals are hardly made public. Although a theoretical possibility exists in a few cases for some transfer of technology for agricultural development, risk also exists to peasant farmers who cannot compete with well-resourced commercial farms. Take, for instance, the case of barley and oilseeds producers in Ethiopia.

Essentially, the Middle East is left with two choices. “The region has to import. The question is, invest abroad or rely on the free market?” said Dr Eckart Woertz, program manager in economics at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

Sudan is hoping to use foreign cash to reinvigorate its under-performing agricultural sector, but there is growing disagreement over the extent to which outsiders, rather than local farmers, should be taking control of the industry.

Cru, a small specialist fund management firm, recently launched a Malawi-based fund called Africa Invest. The fund has made an initial investment of £2m in 2,000 hectares of land that’s producing paprika for western supermarkets. With land prices starting at £800 per hectare (compared to £10,000 in the UK) it’s relatively easy to amass large farms that can be upgraded with new technology, mechanisation and better production methods. According to Cru, annual returns on capital should exceed 30 to 40 per cent.

A British entrepreneur is leasing land from smallholders in an attempt to revive the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union

A military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.

Property worth millions of shillings belonging to Dominion farms is set to be auctioned next week.

Cash-strapped Karuturi Flowers in Naivasha is back in court in a bid to stop receiver managers from auctioning its property over Sh1.8 billion debt

Deposed Indian flower firm is planning a major comeback to Kenya next month, after entering a debt deal that would enable it retake its vast farms currently under control of its creditor CFC Stanbic Bank.

Large scale commercial land deals at Nuanetsi Ranch, Chisumbanje and Chiadzwa are mired in corruption and end up impacting on livelihoods of communities.

Swedish Count Carl Gustav Wachmeister bought 3,310 ha in Victoria State, Australia