Hassad Food knows how to shop. The $1b subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund finalised a $500m agreement last year to grow wheat & rice on 100,000 ha in Sudan and has announced plans to invest $700m worldwide this year.

A group of food security advocates wants a Philippine government-led corporation that identifies new land suitable for local and foreign agricultural businesses abolished.

A group of farmers from Punjab are planning to take 1 lakh hectare land on lease in the African nation of Ethiopia for cultivation.

MCC is playing a key role in commodifying Africa’s farmlands

"The Chinese want a secure food supply, and they're coming into New Zealand to do that, by the look of it," a local farm union official says

The Congo ventures are not core businesses to be based in the Congo but instead, extensions of businesses located in South Africa

Ethiopia must harness its enormous agricultural potential, not by selling it off as a cheap commodity, but by supporting farmers in growing culturally appropriate crops for domestic markets, using agro-ecologically sustainable farming methods.

Uganda has agreed to allow Egypt to cultivate wheat on Ugandan soil.

Lawrence Asset Management's Ravi Sood suggests investing in food production in low-cost areas that are water-rich – Brazil, tropical Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The much-discussed Congo land-lease, granting 200,000 hectares to South African farmers with a further 10 million hectares in the balance, appears to mark a departure from the usual terms underpinning foreign acquisition of fertile land by multinationals

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

UAE foreign investment in food production have so far focused on leasing Pakistan and Sudan’s agricultural land, with new prospects in Cambodian rice, Canadian wheat and Australian beef. Alongside the strategic deals at the national level, private investment has followed which should open new channels of trade, for example, Al Qudra Holding has plans to grow grain and vegetables in Vietnam and Croatia as well as Pakistan.

Civil society, including African farmers unions, need to educate local people that such land deals are not in their interests, however couched in 'win-win' terminology they appear to be.

Pursuing its strategy of penetrating the Middle East market, the company has set up a special committee to study the possibility to increase exports to the region. So far, the company has signed a farming contract with Bahrain for supplying food products.

Laos has approached Thailand as a partner in a joint venture with Kuwait to grow rice in Laos. The Lao government has allocated 200,000ha.

“It is the height of stupidity for our country to bargain our lands for the sake of other nation’s food security, while being dependent on importation for our very own food security needs,” says Rafael Mariano

A focus on agricultural productivity should not become a cover for foreign private companies to grab land or impose expensive, input-intensive methods in the name of modernisation.

We challenge the line agencies, legislators and national government to immediately stop the leasing of public land to foreign corporations. Instead, public lands that have huge potential to ensure food security and nation building should be distributed to Filipino small farmers.

Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor.

Malaysia's biggest company Sime Darby has struck a deal with the Liberian government to develop oil palm and rubber estates in West African nation as land runs out at home and global demand for palm oil surges.

The Ethiopian government’s ambitious target of harvesting 28 million tonnes of cereals in the first three quarters of the 2007/2008 budget year has failed. Authorities seem determined to change this situation by leasing huge chunks of land to other sovereign states for mechanised farming.

Gulf nations now are quietly scouring the globe for rich farmland to rent or buy outright.

The UAE and other Gulf oil producers are considering creating a giant fund to invest in farm in fertile Arab areas and other nations to slash a soaring import bill and ease reliance on foreign markets for their food.