Friends of the Earth and As You Sow are circulating a letter to TIAA clients calling on the firm to disclose information about all of its investments in companies with farmland and palm oil operations, and to commit to a deforestation- and land grab-free investment policy.

The Bank will itself invest US $24 billion and leverage additional investments through equity, quasi equity, debt and risk instruments to catalyze investments at scale from the private sector and with co-financing from traditional donors and new players.

Wall Street remains enamored with US and international farmland, speakers at a Farm Foundation meeting in Louisville said last week.

Farm Foundation, NFP, along with USDA’s Economic Research Service and Bank of America Merrill Lynch host a workshop on the implications of non-farmer investor interest in agricultural resources.

The American financial group and its partners amassed vast new holdings of farmland despite a move by Brazil’s government in 2010 to effectively ban such large-scale deals by foreigners.

Map Of Agriculture says it is well positioned to serve the comparative farming system benchmarking needs of farmland investors.

A substantial payout could be in store for private equity firms willing to take on the risk and plough capital into the farming business.

GlobalGrain, la grand’ messe des entreprises du commerce des aliments agricoles, se déroule pour la 12ème fois à Genève

The current flow of agricultural investment is focused just on export-based industrial agriculture, while smallholders and family agriculture remain deprived of investment.

Discussion paper for the workshop ‘Mapping the State of Play on the Global Food Landscape’ Waterloo, 25-27 September 2014.

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.

BRICS states, except Russia, are enhancing and facilitating land grabs abroad in a way that is inconsistent with their proclamations of sustainable development, cooperation solidarity, and respect of national sovereignty.

Après le groupe Louis Dreyfus, le deuxième plus gros investisseur français dans les terres agricoles se nomme Vincent Bolloré.

La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec se lance à son tour dans la déferlante d’investissements des fonds de retraite dans les terres agricoles.

Sixty years on, controversial agricultural projects are back in fashion in Africa and other parts of the developing world as investors - from foreign governments to wealthy individuals - hunt for land to grow food.

India, which doesn’t allow corporate farming domestically, has joined the growing list of countries going overseas to look for food security.

The scariest aspect of this unfolding phenomenon is that despite the foreseeable terrible consequences, the appetite among the rich countries to own a piece of this developing-country fertile land continues to grow, turning to an ugly competition.

New data set documens 416 recent, large-scale land grabs by foreign investors for the production of food crops, covering nearly 35 million hectares of land in 66 countries.

Aucun aménagement à la marge de ces politiques ne saurait contenir la rapacité des investisseurs, publics ou privés : c’est la logique néolibérale qui les sous-tend qu’il faut combattre, au moyen de mobilisations populaires

Unfortunately, given the global nature of capital, even if the US were to completely shut down speculation, it would just move offshore.

Fear of unrest and hunger for profit are sparking massive acquisitions of farmland.

African farmers do need investment and support. They desperately need decent roads and access to local markets, processing equipment to add value to their own diverse farm produce, storage and drying facilities to prevent post-harvest losses, and basic amenities such as schools and health centres and water wells to improve rural lives, so that farming communities can thrive. But foreign investors are not in business to provide any of these things.

That land is far more complex and valuable than plain dirt was one of the central themes of FC Business Intelligence’s “World Agriculture Investment USA” conference in Chicago on May 9-10, 2011. A report from AllAboutAlpha.

The world’s second-oldest profession–farming–is a hot investment

With the surge of corporate farms in Argentina and Brazil over the past two to three years, I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the biggest groups with a short description of each.

Investors are growing more bullish on U.S. farmland as softness in some sectors spurs increased competition for buying quality acres. Capital flow is increasing from overseas, in particular from Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Sous l’œil bienveillant de l’ONU, les grands noms de la finance s’accaparent des régions agricoles entières.

Agribusiness and global investors are scooping up farmland. Are corporate farmers the new colonialists? asks BusinessWeek

The fervour with which foreign commercial interests are forcing their agricultural 'solutions' on the African continent represents nothing more than an established endeavour to protect profits and access to resources.

Perhaps the UN’s hand-wringing is just sentimental. Deals will be done and the rush to buy land has begun in Europe, too.