Harvard’s ownership of Agrícola Brinzal casts serious doubts on the wisdom of Harvard Management Company’s current policies.

In an effort to help tackle food security, officials yesterday agreed to double the capital of the Arab Authority for Agriculture Investment and Development, a multilateral lender aimed at promoting investment in agriculture.

The 16,000-hectare farm which Första AP-fonden bought in Australia in December was one of a clutch of purchases of farmland, worth some $100m, by the pension fund.

As PrimeAg Australia's $125 million sale of rural properties to US fund manager TIAA-CREF goes through, the question now being raised by investors is what will happen to the residual portfolio.

PrimeAg Australia has agreed to sell 60 per cent of its land and water portfolio to US financial services organisation TIAA-CREF for up to $126 million.

Describing itself as a consultant and “master distributor” of products designed “to bring working capital to a variety of projects” – including upgrading farmland overseas and forestry –Intelligent Partnership published a 76 page report on the alternatives sector this week.

Olam's rebuttal provides new information on its rice farming operations in Nigeria, including its cooperation with the Africa Rice Centre of the CGIAR.

Investment and pension funds are buying up Brazilian farmland and steadily pushing up the prices of Brazil's productive tropical farmland.

The £1.9bn pension fund of the UK’s Environment Agency is set to unveil a new investment strategy later this month, including plans to invest in farmland and forestry for the first time.

Four African leaders attending the rich nations’ meeting that opens in Washington today have been cautioned to be wary of the G8’s New Alliance to Increase Food and Nutrition Security, noting that it poses a serious threat to small-scale farmers in Africa.

On the evening of April 24, following a daylong rally against large-scale land investment deals in poor nations, the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan became the venue for a 30-minute light show against land grabs in Africa.

Family that sold Australia's biggest water licence in history has been selling its NSW farming operations and is setting up a new agricultural empire in the Blue Nile state in Sudan

World Bank officials say they will further support the county in the development of staple crop processing zones, while a US company indicates interest in 25,000 ha rice project in Rima irrigation scheme, Sokoto.

African continent is the new destination for Indian agriculture companies, as more than 80 of them have invested over Rs 10,800 crore in commercial farming activities in under-developed countries of the region.

THE NATIONAL Food Security Bill awaiting parliamentary approval should be backed by simultaneous plan to improve essential agricultural linkages as the demand is expected to exceed supply by 2020.

With the merger, Alpcot Agro now controls well over 250,000 hectares of farmland in Russia and the Ukraine.

Peasant movements concur that in the absence of control over their lands, real food sovereignty is impossible.

Egyptian private equity firm Citadel Capital, which has leased 259,500 acres for farming in Unity state, is among dozens of foreign entities to have struck large land deals in the new country.

"I wonder if greater returns could come for Africa if attention were paid to backing the continent’s millions of smallholders? And yet, as I speak, many are being driven off their land and swelling the ranks of the urban dispossessed."

The Tanzania government has been advised to draft laws to curb acquisition by foreigners of extensive tracts of the country’s fertile agricultural land as foreign direct investment would be a disaster in years to come.

The company plans to lease land to grow palm oil, sugar cane and cereals in Tanzania, to add to land it has acquired in Ethiopia. Karuturi is visiting Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia as part of a delegation of 35 Indian investors.

Mr. Graziano, newly elected director general of the FAO, said the land-grab pace was not significant, but that the situation needs to be monitored because “every serpent starts off small.”

Regulators are warning that a new real estate bubble may be forming across the US grain belt -- and National Australia Bank is right in the middle.

The government of Bangladesh has also been looking for farmland abroad -- in Burma, Kenya, Uganda

Glencore has an 8.7% share of the "addressable" global grain trade and farming operations covering 270,000ha in Argentina, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine.

The move comes after two fact-finding missions led by the foreign secretary last year found farming in the so-called dark continent "exceedingly lucrative" for Bangladeshi investors.

As a relatively new and untapped asset class, farmland remains mysterious to some insitutional investors. Greg Bright spoke to Charmion McBride, chief operating officer, global farmland, at Insight Investment in the UK.

"Several very powerful groups in the Middle East are seriously considering the 3.2 million hectares that Serbia has to offer."

India and Mauritius have resumed discussions over a proposal to hand over the twin islands of Agalega to India for tourism development and possibly agriculture.

Richard Fyers, a commercial lawyer with the NZ China Trade Association, writes about the fuss made over land sales to foreigners.