Last week, bids closed for an 83% stake in Fonterra's biggest supplier, Dairy Holdings, which oversees 72 South Island farms. Bidders reportedly include Chinese dairy giant Bright Dairy, a pastoral fund owned by Australian investment bank Macquarie Group, British private equity firm Terra Firma. US private equity firm Carlyle Group and the Harvard Endowment Fund.

There is a jobs cow waiting to be milked in Africa. It is agriculture and agri-business, says World Bank VP of Africa Region

Qatar pursuing a "shared-benefits model" that meets the needs of investors and local communities in currently cultivated land areas where the yield gaps are large.

Following the suggestion of French NGOs, La Via Campesina and ROPPA, with the support of FIAN, Friends of the Earth International, CCFD – Terre Solidaire and Peuples Solidaires, took leadership to facilitate an assembly of convergence of all groups interested in launching a strong appeal against land grabbing in Dakar.

Foreign investors see Africa as a breadbasket. Done well, investment could help with African hunger but create food security for the rest of the world.

Several African leaders have bought lands in Ethiopia to develop agricultural projects or tourism resorts. They are let to bypass a 2007 ban on export of cereals, still in place for other investors.

Saskatchewan has some of the richest and least expensive farmland in the world, and there's a gigantic pool of global money that would like to buy up as much of it as they can.

Public forum calls for suspension of foreign land grabs in the Office du Niger, Mali.

LRAN briefing paper series, October 2010

The agenda of the upcoming session of the FAO Committee on World Food Security, on 11-14 October 2010, includes a policy roundtable on land tenure and international investment in agriculture.

Studies suggest that a third of the land sold or acquired in Africa is intended for fuel crops - some 5 million hectares. Friends of the Earth has looked at cases of land grabbing in 11 countries across Africa, from Ethiopia to Mozambique

UNCTAD believes pension funds, with their apparent focus on reputation, accountability, and the long term, could set new best-practice standards as they join the farmland investment trend.

States and mega-corporations are snapping up cheap land to produce food and making money at the expense of people in host countries.

Critics say Australia's Labor party has failed to come to grips with country's future food security, including the acquisition of domestic farmland by foreign investors

Global Witness proposes how the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on responsible governance of land tenure can best address the macroeconomic impacts of corruption and governance failures in large scale land acquisitions.

Responsible investment in agriculture is preferably not about large scale foreign land acquisitions. It is about promoting sustainable agriculture, reducing poverty and meeting the world’s food needs, says IFAD's Harold Liversage

With the emerging land investments a new set of challenges emerges for the woman farmer.

Participants agreed on the importance of an open and inclusive dialogue to continue encouraging responsible agricultural investment by various parties.

"Investors like Citadel Capital and Goldman Sachs must be stopped from acquiring large tracts of land in Africa because this practice has become a serious threat to the continent's food sovereignty"

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.

We, the peasants and small farmers of the world, do not need agribusiness and international investment schemes to eat.

"A key obstacle to more transparent debate and informed decisions by governments and investors [involved in global land transactions] is the lack of science-based information," writes Surendra Shah in Nature magazine

A year after the purchases of vast swathes of farm land in Africa first drew public attention, transactions remain as opaque as ever.

The most unbelievably naïve reaction to the news that a mysterious Chinese company is hoping to buy up to $1.5 billion worth of dairy farms came from Federated Farmers, which said that this is an “unintended consequence” of the NZ/China Free Trade Agreemen

A discussion note prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNCTAD and the World Bank Group to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue.

Guyana has an abundance of fertile land and aims to attract Gulf investment in its agricultural sector.

"Hassad [Food] has innovated by considering investments in overseas agribusinesses rather than only purchasing land in countries with questionable property rights, and where the indigenous population may not benefit from such purchases," writes the US embassy in Doha

Investment in agriculture is soaring. So, worryingly, is distrust of markets and trade.

The 450 civil society organisations taking part in a parallel forum were not won over by FAO's optimism about a code of conduct. "Land grabbing by external capital must stop," read a declaration by participants at the forum.

Meanwhile, the government is planning to launch an initial public offering for the shares of Hassad Food, the strategic food investment arm of Qatar Investment Authority, in order to list it on the local bourse, according to Doha-based Al Arab daily.