The plan to create a land bank brings back memories of the fury that greeted proposals by the Qatar government to buy 40,000 hectares in Tana River for agricultural purposes in exchange for $3.5 billion for the Kenya government to build a second deep-water port in Lamu.

"We have acquired a very large piece of agricultural land in the Nile Delta – a 15,000 sq km tract of land where we will be producing for international markets, including the Arab World."

Razzia. Etats, industriels, people, tout le monde s'y met : l'achat de terre est devenu un investissement stratégique. (Le Point)

In a new study, the Arab Organisation for Agricultural Development says that Gulf States' projects to grow food abroad are not large enough to slash the Arab farm import bill.

Activists say as many as 150,000 people in the Tana River delta could be displaced by the Qatari land-lease deal -- and it is not the only one in Kenya.

A conference in Utrecht on 8 July 2009

Such blockbuster deals neglect to take into consideration the true interests of the farmers

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.

In 2006, Beijing and Maputo signed a memorandum of understanding concerning the creation of a massive agricultural project in the Zambezi river valley area.

Du nouveau pour le mégaprojet de la société italienne Bonifiche Ferraresi (BF) en Algérie. L’entreprise a obtenu ce jeudi le contrat de concession de 36 000 hectares

Selu Limited, a special-purpose vehicle tasked with transforming the Galana-Kulalu project, has been allocated 20,000 acres within the scheme to produce 720,000 bags of maize and 160,000 bags of soybeans annually over the next 30 years.

Agricultural workers and a legal advocacy group have raised concerns over a “fast-tracked” bill seeking to extend land lease terms for foreign investors to nearly a century, warning of its potential negative impact on farmers, plantation workers and indigenous cultural communities.

Irrigation projects include a US$172mn, 23,000ha project with US-based Valley Irrigation , a €75mn, 13,000 ha project with Spain's Grupo Charmatin, and a US$100mn, 20,000 ha project with US-based Lindsay Zimmatic.

The company Sequoia has obtained a lease over 60,000 hectares for a eucalyptus monoculture project in the Haut-Ogooué province, Gabon. but statements from communities and a survey of more than 1,400 people from the impacted region reveal a total rejection of this plantation project.

Several farmers in Phalaborwa, Limpopo, have lost land or grazing rights to a huge commercial citrus farming project

L’Algérie lance un vaste projet de mise en valeur d’un demi-million d’hectares dans le sud du pays, avec des entreprises italiennes et qataries, pour y produire du blé dur, des oléagineuses et des légumes secs.

Des organisations de la société civile libérienne, ouest-africaine et internationale, ainsi que des individus et communautés locales, sont alarmés par la nouvelle selon laquelle le géant d'hévéas Socfin cherche à céder ses parts dans la Salala Rubber Corporation sans d'abord régler ses dettes sociales, environnementales, culturelles, financières et économiques à l'égard des communautés affectées

Liberian, West African and international civil society organizations, communities and individuals are alarmed by news that SRC’s parent company, Socfin, is seeking to divest its shares in SRC without first settling its social, environmental, cultural, financial, and economic debts to affected communities.

Villagers in Madagascar are suffering intimidation and heavy pressure from the Italian company Tozzi Green, which now wants to produce carbon credits on 11,000 hectares of farmland in the Ihorombe region, say farmers organisations and NGOs

Foreign ownership of American land has gained a lot of buzz lately, but senior staff attorney and professor with the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School, Fran Miller says more attention should go to domestic corporate ownership.

In Kenya’s lush Thika region, stealing pineapples is a de facto capital crime. At least nine men have allegedly been killed by security guards employed by Del Monte, the world’s largest producer of pineapples.

Some of the world's largest pension funds bet big on Brazilian farmland. Communities, and the climate, are paying the price

Extractivism does not only concern mining, but also agriculture. Investments, such as those made by Senhuile in the Senegal delta, are part of large programs of landscape and social re-engineering in the context of a juncture between “green capitalism” and food security paradigms.

The site of the dispute is part of a 42,420 hectares economic land concession that was granted to the Chinese company Hengfu Group Sugar Industry in 2011.

US-based Spades reaches landscape restoration agreements with Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cote d'Ivoire for projects that span around 10 million hectares and involve the planting of 1.5 billion trees.

UAE's E20 Investment Limited announced interest in a a $20M investment in a beef feedlot with Ugandan company Fresh Cuts Limited t produce 5250MT per year of beef export.

The mediation process is set to collapse, unless strong measures are taken to ensure adequate, safe, independent and truly inclusive participation of the local communities and their representatives.

The company behind the Mennonite project, Terra Invest Suriname & Guyana, is looking to obtain 30,000 hectares for approximately 1,000 Mennonite families, but could go as high as 90,000 hectares.

The Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo will plant 40,000 hectares with trees to combat greenhouse gas emissions and pursue an agroforestry plantation on another 10,000 hectares in the Batéké Plateaux

Activists have slammed the Indonesian police for rights violations after officers reportedly shot dead a villager and injured at least two others during a protest against an oil palm plantation company in Borneo.