Foreign interests including state-owned companies from China and the Middle East are increasingly looking to Australia to secure their food production by purchasing key agricultural assets.

Most other countries have much tighter controls over foreign investment than New Zealand.

Western Gulf Advisory, a Bahrain-Zurich based company, plans to invest $1 billion into the Australian economy, including farm acquisitions, over the next few years.

A rush of foreign investment interest in Australian farmland is stirring new concerns about just how much overseas ownership of local agricultural resources is too much.

The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population, a senior Liberal said on the eve of a visit by a top Bejing official.

Questions have been raised at a Senate inquiry in Canberra about whether foreign investment rules go far enough to keep Australian agriculture sustainable.

Joint venture with the India/UAE Allana Group acquires 20,000 head of cattle owned by Felda and gains access to over 850,000 hectares of oil palm land.

By 2008 global grain prices were reaching record levels, and Swedish, British, Chinese, and Korean investors were piling into Russian farmland.

There are growing concerns that a legislative loophole could allow vast tracks of Australia's farmland to be sold to the Chinese Government.

The process of buying up large swathes of farmland in foreign countries is politically sensitive, but "beggars can't be choosers" says a senior executive at a leading Middle Eastern food commodities trading firm

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund agricultural company launched Hassad Australia last year, aimed at ensuring that livestock and grain needs for Qatar, from Australian farmland, are met.

Companies from the kingdom are meeting with representatives of the state of Western Australia to discuss buying equity in farms and investing in the wheat supply chain.

Chinese investment in Australian farms increased 10-fold in the past six months, as buyers see opportunities in agriculture. “Chinese are wealthy and they are looking for a secure investment in beef, cotton and grain properties, ” said John Burke, an agent for Elders Ltd.

El-Nahda for Integrated Solutions signed an agreement with the White Nile Governorate for a 30-year lease on 60,000 feddans [25,210 ha] of land on which it will build a large-scale commercial rice farm.

The Kuwait-based firm aims to build on its base as the leading food company in the Middle East.

Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management has started up the Macquarie Crop Fund to "acquire or lease grain and oilseed properties located in geographically diverse regions of Australia and Brazil".

Qatar-based Hassad Food has initiated its investment in Australian ­agriculture with the purchase of the prized Kaladbro Estate in far western Victoria.

Saudi Arabia, along with Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, want to buy more than $1 billion worth of Aussie farmland in a 21st century land grab.

BKK Partners, an Australian financial advisory firm, has a client that wants to buy 100,000 ha of Cambodian farmland. Human rights workers and politicians are concerned.

Human rights workers said risks to the rural poor over such deals are significant because they are regularly evicted to make way for foreign investors.

Some of the world's biggest sugar players, including Brazil's Cosan, New York-listed Bunge and privately held US multinational Cargill, might join China in the race for CSR's sugar division

Glencore's agricultural interests include 300,000 hectares of land in Australia, Kazakhstan, Paraguay, Russia and Ukraine.

Hassad Food has launched a large project for producing livestock in Australia with a capacity of up to 70,000 Syrian head of sheep in its first year, and then up to 150,000 head of sheep in three years. The company will also purchase farmlands for the production of grains especially wheat.

Dubai World said on Friday the company was not involved in the dairy farm purchases "in any way".

The Serious Fraud Office has been brought into the controversy over a Maori trust's move to buy thousands of hectares of prime Southland farmland, after revelations that an alleged fraudster is involved: bankrupt Australian "kaumatua" Shane Wenzel.

Hassad Food plans to invest all over the world. “Latin America, Asia, you name it,” says Al Hajri, “Where we invest, we make profit. If Qatar is in need of that production, Hassad has the pleasure to sell to Qatar at no special rate.”

At a two-day conference near the Moroccan capital Rabat, local officials sought to convince Gulf investors that heavy bureaucracy and complex land ownership rules, long seen as decisive obstacles, are a thing of the past.

Foreign companies are covertly buying up adjacent farms in Australia to use as a "salad bowl" in the case of global food shortages.

Peter Hannen is selling his sheep country in western NSW, Australia after his ambitious plan to raise $300 million for an agricultural fund with Dexian Capital couldn't find support.

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.