The Philippines and Qatar signed 4 bilateral agreements and one private sector agreement seen to boost cooperation in investments, tourism, fisheries and the legal field.

Sudan's President says his government gave Qatar 250,000 acres of land in the Nile River state but the project was put on hold because China cancelled a loan that was needed to extend electricity in the area.

The Canadian–based businessman has increased his Marion County land holdings in the past two years nearly sixfold, making him the largest private property owner in the county with 29,000 acres.

Vietnam’s Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group started work on the construction of a US$100 million sugar and sugarcane industrial cluster in Attapeu province, southern Laos.

Thousands of stories like John B Keane’s The Field in the 227 million hectares sold or leased in large-scale land deals since 2001.

"I'm betting the current furor will end up dying down once Congressman Beto Faro's report is in. He's the Workers Party legislator in Brazil, tasked with measuring just how much foreigners control Brazilian farmland."

Investors are pouring into farmland in the US and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar.

It appears that the Bomi County operations of Sime Darby are being hindered as locals there are reportedly holding back lands leased by the government of Liberia to the company.

Sudanese officials have set aside 17,000 hectares of land in White Nile state for an Egyptian meat project.

Global investment funds have sunk as much as $20-billion (U.S.) into farmland, last year alone they bought 111 million acres of farmland.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia will continue to invest in acquiring farmland abroad as part of their strategy to secure food supplies.

China's IKO ltd intends to produce rice and cassava on over 10,000 ha of lands it has acquired in Cameroon.

As foreign investors in Russia are all too aware, there is a perennial conflict within the country’s political elite on how to balance the need for foreign investment and outside technology with an impulse to maximize state control over sectors that carry outsized economic or social significance.

Singapore-based Olam will develop a palm-oil plantation covering as much as 300,000 hectares in the southeast of the country.

Public opinion is clearly against the Crafar farms sale on the basis that NZ is "selling the farm", while selling a controlling stake in a processing plant is seen as another issue altogether. There is a strong argument for conditionality either way, writes Fran O'Sullivan.

Vietnam's president Nguyen Minh Triet on Saturday met Saudi business leaders who asked for flexible investment regulations and access to Vietnam's farmlands

The worldwide financial crisis has reportedly stalled several agricultural deals between Gulf countries and overseas partners, including two between Bahrain and Pakistan.

Karuturi believes the potential for large profits is so great that it plans to invest nearly $1bn in its Ethiopian agricultural operations

Zambian government has made agriculture development a priority as evidenced by the reserving of 1 million hectares of land for cultivation and investment, according to foreign investor Neil Crowder

"I think it is not right to sell or give your land to foreigners... until you have exhausted every local possibility," said Osama Daoud, chief executive of the Sudanese DAL group which runs large agricultural projects.

Bangkok was wary of GCC efforts to ensure its food supplies by purchasing rice growing lands, and now political instability is chilling the investment climate. Tom Spender reports

The Sekem Group, Egypt’s foremost producer and exporter of organic food to Europe and the US, is not a typical Egyptian enterprise.

The stalled Jordanian agricultural megaproject in Sudan is expected to be resumed at the beginning of 2009

Pirates are not the only source of concern off the African coast. The deal South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics is negotiating with the Madagascan government looks rapacious. Alas, it is but the latest brazen example of a wider phenomenon.

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.

The country’s improved railway connectivity facilitates fruit exports to China but has also sparked a boom in foreign-owned banana and durian farms, leading to deforestation.

Indonesia is going ahead with a project to convert millions of acres in Papua into a gigantic sugarcane plantation to produce bioethanol. But Indigenous communities and environmentalists worry that the project in South Papua’s Merauke regency will lead to land grabs, ecological damage, and the destruction of traditional livelihoods.

The world's biggest cotton certification scheme is giving the green light to clothes made from cotton farmed on mega estates ‘plundering’ the Cerrado.

After the Ondo State government allocated SAO Agro thousands of hectares in the Oluwa Forest Reserve for an oil palm plantation, it moved into the forest with full force and left trails of blood and devastation.

India’s growing embrace of industrial palm oil threatens the nation’s rich diversity of oilseed crops. What are the risks for farmers, public health and the environment?