Institutional investors, large corporates and big family operators are expected to dominate demand for prime farmland this financial year as smaller farmers’ buying power takes a hit from higher interest rates, lower profits.

With favourable global economic conditions, including current high commodity prices, and with Australia’s exchange rate at sub USD 0.70, big properties around Australia are changing hands with overseas investors buying in.

Young people are moving away, foreign and domestic investors are moving in and smaller farms are being swallowed up.

Major Brazilian meatpacker Minerva Foods and part-owner Saudi Arabia's SALIC have bought two sheep-focused meat processors in Western Australia for almost $48 million with plans to expand their operations.

China-invested banana plantations in Laos are sickening Lao villagers exposed to agricultural chemicals.

In a rare rejection of New Zealand's Overseas Investment Office application, Canadians have been barred from buying more than 4500ha of South Island farmland.

Tokyo-based Nippon Life Insurance Company makes its first investment in a farmland investment fund through a US$92.5 million investment in an overseas farmland investment fund managed by Hancock Natural Resources Group

Glencore Plc agreed to sell just-under a 10 percent stake in its agriculture unit to Canada’s British Columbia Investment Management Corp. for $624.9 million in cash as it continues to cut debt.

Chinese investors will spend nearly $2.5 billion in agriculture and $1.7 billion in financial assets. In 2014, those were numbers were $32 million and $51 million respectively.

New Zealand dairy giant will launch a fund that will pool capital from investors such as sovereign wealth funds and pension funds to invest in land and fixtures of dairy farms through a farm-owning entity.

Fonterra boss Theo Spierings is "not worried” about sales of NZ productive land to foreigners so long as we are “working together” with foreign owners.

Sivasankaran’s land grabbing spree has threatened millions of livelihoods, says report

Farmland total returns tend to be uncorrelated with financial asset returns, offering genuine portfolio diversification for institutional investors.

One of Australia's big banks is facing scrutiny it financed a Cambodian sugar business responsible for forcing almost 500 families off their land.

Loggers have used Special Agriculture and Business Leases to take control of over 5 million hectares of forest – more than 10% of Papua New Guinea’s total landmass.

Companies with bad environmental records are increasingly turning to a little-known nonprofit called TFT to make sure they meet commitments to improve their practices. It remains to be seen if this is just a PR move.

Cofco makes offer for stake in Nidera, which produces soybeans on over 20,000 ha in Argentina.

Australia's Trade Minister Craig Emerson says plans to increase scrutiny on farmland investments would ruin any chance at all of a free-trade deal being struck with China.

Circle of Blue have put together an interactive map of land grabs by country and by sector.

New Zealand is one of many countries upon whom China’s entrepreneurs have cast their eyes for opportunities to buy farmland, mineral and power resources to shore up China’s looming food shortage and resource-hungry economy.

Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co, China's biggest beverage producer, hopes to invest about $220 million in dairy farms in Western Australia in order to expand its import channels for milk.

Community agitation grows as farmers feel threatened in New South Wales

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

Mauritius has secured a large area of land in Mozambique to produce hybrid rice for export back hom through a joint venture with a Singaporean company.