The Russian Direct Investment Fund said it was leading a consortium buying a $200M stake in Sodrugestvo, a Luxembourg-based crop producer operating in Russia, several ex-Soviet states, Brazil and Northern Europe.

Guyana's President Donald Ramotar says thet "the offer is still on the table" to all CARICOM countries to take advantage of Guyana's bountiful agricultural resources.

Critics of the initiative, however, fear the commercialisation of agriculture will not benefit small-scale farmers

Italian confectionery group Ferrero signed with the Serbian Minister of Agriculture an agreement on the purchase of 1,000 hectares intended for the production of hazelnuts.

The top priority for Mitsui's massive investments in Australia is starting to shift from resources to agribusiness

The investments, equivalent to almost a fifth of the size of the economy, will pump cash into fisheries, agriculture, livestock, health and roads while funding imports from Arab countries to the tune of $145 million.

The UK’s business ambassador for agriculture and CEO of large-scale agriculture firm Velcourt Group, James Townshend, met with Burmese government officials and toured agricultural projects in the country.

Chinese entrepreneurs are going global ahead of officials. Countries with developed agriculture such as the US, Australia, Chile and Argentina have become their prime destinations.

The desert states of the Gulf are changing tack in their multi-billion dollar search for food security.

Chinese firms already lease or control at least 600,000 hectares of land in Russia's Far East, which is equivalent to the size of a small U.S. state like Delaware.

The project will focus on two areas -- Ngalam Valley and Lac de Guiers that have parcels of land of 15,000 and 40,000 hectares which are suitable for commercial expansion.

The group, formerly known as Alpcot Agro, said it had signed deals on the disposal of 24,800 hectares of land, mainly in central and southern Ukraine, to other farming groups for $5.6m excluding machinery, buildings and crops.

Singapore yesterday sought “strong, firm, effective” action against Singaporean companies that may be involved in illegal burning in Indonesia that led to the city-state’s worst pollution on record.

Yamba has been warned by her local MP not to accept any offer by an investor for her "worthless" roadside scrubland. When the new road from Iringa to Dodoma is finished, it could be worth a fortune, he says.

The scale and pace of the large scale acquisition of land — or land grabbing — in the developing world in the last decade is unprecedented and is having disastrous consequences for the world’s poor.

African lawmakers have resolved to strengthen existing laws at the national and regional level to prevent fraudulent land deals on the continent

The acquisition takes to 422,000 hectares the area which Kernel controls in the Ukraine – an area bigger than Luxembourg or most UK counties.

A consortium of Saudi groups - comprising dairy giant Almarai, grain importer Al Rajhi and Salic, the agriculture arm of the country's Public Investment Fund sovereign wealth fund – buys Continental Farmers Group, which has large farming operations in Poland and the Ukraine.

US-based Aslan Global Management, a leader in the "patient capital" movement, manages more than 12,000 hectares of farmland in Ukraine and Mozambique on long-term lease and just entered into a 99-year lease for 45,000 hectares in Tanzania.

Faced with reports of land grabbing by Indian companies in some African countries, especially Ethiopia, the government says the Indian companies have taken land on lease as per rules of the country concerned.

The island's biodiversity threatened by plans to expand a palm oil plantation from 610 ha to 5,000 ha, through a 2009 deal signed with the Belgian company Socfinco.

The private sector needs to double investment in the land itself to help drive agricultural development in countries that need it most, say the heads of EBRD and FAO

"Africa will be more food insecure if these investments go to other parts of the world and Africa has to turn to those places to buy food," according to Dr Ousmane Badiane of IFPRI

With the purchase of nearly 15,000ha of land in Jerramungup last month, the Qatar-based Hassad Food Company now owns 250,000ha of farmland in Austalia

Released on the eve of a World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, a new report reveals widespread violations of people’s rights and environmental destruction from a land grab initially funded by the World Bank in Uganda.

Farmers and activists are increasing pressure on the government to be more transparent about large-scale land deals with foreign firms and to make sure local communities benefit

A controversial plan approved by Tajikistan’s Ministry of Agriculture to lease 6,000 hectares of land to China for development has been met with suspicion by some members of the country’s political opposition

The amount of productive farmland being taken out of New Zealand hands each year has dropped off sharply in the past decade, figures show. But those opposed to overseas ownership of land say the best land has already been cherry-picked by foreign buyers who push prices up.

“There is no villagization programme,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, founder of Karuturi Global, told Mint via telephone. “This is a completely jaundiced western vision. They assume anything in Africa has to be done by the whites and the Chinese and Indians should have businesses only in their own countries.”

German farmer plans to expand his operation to 250,000 hectares, an area the size of the state of Saarland, and to float his company on the stock market in Germany, where he pays a portion of his taxes.