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

Foreign investors aren't just after land in Africa. Access to water is essential – which can bring them into direct competition with the needs of local communities

Peasant movements concur that in the absence of control over their lands, real food sovereignty is impossible.

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

"As investors we always want to be on the correct side of global macro trends, and whatever China needs or is buying lots of, we want to own as investments."

The land of a traditional kingdom within Uganda has been used as a political threat and reward for over a century. It grows grain, it may have oil and gas, and it is home to the quickly expanding capital

After two years with little progress, the government is considering shifting the location of its planned food estate to East Kalimantan from Papua because of the availability of land.

Indigenous Papuans are at risk of further marginalisation and the forests on which they rely face destruction due to a project by the Indonesian government, activists say.

While millions of people in the Horn of Africa suffer a terrible drought, foreign investors are harvesting tonnes of cereals to be exported to Asia and the Gulf states.

Local stock and station agents in Western District Australia estimate the Qatar government paid a premium of up to 20 per cent in order to secure the controversial deal,

Wealthy U.S. and European investors are accumulating large swaths of African agricultural lands in deals that have little accountability and give them greater control over food supply for the world's poor

More than 10 per cent of Papua New Guinea's land mass has been handed over to foreign and national corporate interests over the past seven years under mysterious land deals that appear to be aimed at logging, not food or cash crop production.

The Australian Parliament has moved to quell some of the anxieties surrounding a perceived foreign buy-up of local land, last week passing a motion regarding foreign ownership of agricultural land and agribusiness.

The entrepreneur has a plan for land preservation that actually makes money. Now he just has to prove it.

Around one million hectares of Romania’s farmland are in foreign hands, and the interest in investing in agricultural plots is growing.

An opposition party in Mali wrote to the country's president demanding that details of contracts leasing out massive areas of agricultural land be made public.

Mali’s president and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi have begun a major agricultural project that will divert much of the river’s water and threaten the delta’s future.

As a relatively new and untapped asset class, farmland remains mysterious to some insitutional investors. Greg Bright spoke to Charmion McBride, chief operating officer, global farmland, at Insight Investment in the UK.

The farner’s union claims that the Malibya deal was done behind closed doors and then presented as a fait accompli, a deal that effectively hands over control of Mali’s main rice growing region to a foreign power.

Foreign investors are already knee deep in Ukrainian agriculture, with full or partial stakes in around half of the country’s top 60 agricultural holdings.

The morality of the global land rush is finely balanced and even the World Bank appears deeply torn.

What India can learn from China is not its alarming passion for buying farmland in poor countries but its awareness of the value of agricultural land to meet the food needs of its citizens.

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.

From virtually nowhere, China has rocketed to become the biggest foreign direct investor in Brazil this year with purchases ranging from iron ore mines to vast tracts of farmland and the electricity grid.

A four-part piece about the increasing prevalence of large-scale land acquisition or "land grabs" in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Worldwatch Intitute.

A behind-the-scenes account of the struggle of a local community in Kenya to protect their livelihoods, as US-owned Dominion Farms takes their lands.

Study says creation of a farm fund is crucial for the success of Arab agricultural projects aimed at achieving self-sufficiency since most fertile countries in the region lack sufficient investments.

Executives from the South Korean company Hyundai are negotiating with state governments for the purchase of land in Brazil, with the objective of planting and exporting soya to South Korea.

Saudi Arabia is attempting to strengthen its position in what seems certain to be a growing competition for food among the nations of the Middle East.

The economic nationalism and calls for protectionism seem ironic given the fact that Fonterra itself is a large multinational, which in addition to having farms in China, has since 2002 been in partnership with global food giant Nestle in the Dairy Partners Americas.