For the first time, the New Mexico State Investment Council is investing in Brazilian agriculture through Brookfield Asset Management’s Brazil Agriculture Fund II vehicle.

Africa is seeing a new wave of colonialism as multinational corporations, aided by rich governments and financial institutions, vie to increase their control of land, seeds, water and other resources.

ADECRU denounces the concession of large tracts of land to Portucel, Lúrio Green and other companies without the least consultation with affected communities.

Guidelines to improve land governance in the context of large-scale land acquisitions provide an opportunity for affected countries to make necessary reforms to mitigate negative impacts.

Disregarding the rights of indigenous people to their traditional lands is costing companies millions of dollars each year, and costing communities themselves their lives.

The growing Ebola virus outbreak not only highlights the tragedy enveloping the areas most affected but also offers a commentary on they way in which the political ecology in West Africa has allowed this disease to become established.

MIGA—the political risk insurance and credit enhancement arm of the World Bank Group—plays an important role in making agricultural FDI more effective by reducing investors’ perceived risks to encourage market entry while applying environmental and social performance standards that boost the project’s sustainability.

Land grabs in Africa could herald a new dystopian age of hunger

Wilmar says it will ensure that its own plantations and companies from which it sources only provide products that are “free from links to deforestation or abuse of human rights and local communities”.

The threat posed to agriculture by environmental hazards is now so great that it could wipe as much as £5 trillion off the value of the world’s farm land, equipment and stock in any one year, a heavyweight study is warning.

China is headed to spend a record this year on food assets and farms after a $32.7 billion splurge in the past five years and just $4.2 billion in the prior half-decade, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

There is little international policing of land deals resulting in local farmers being forced off lands and deeper into poverty.

For all the willing buyers seeking tracts of Australian farm land, local investors are not among them. They wonder what all the fuss is about.

A growing worldwide land rush is having a negative impact on the local and indigenous people says José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the FAO to conference at Cornell University.

The Canadian company Stevia Nutra Corporation announced that it has entered into a “Services Provision Agreement” with Ecologica Co. Ltd, a Cambodian agro-development company, to develop largescale stevia plantations in Cambodia

Karuturi, which has 300,000 ha in Ethiopia, is now targeting the DRC, Tanzania, Mozambique, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

Concerns about land grabbing stem from a desire to hold the government accountable when the drive to make Thailand the Kitchen of the World ends up destroying ecological systems, small farmers' livelihoods, and our food security.

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.

Investment managers meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York said rising US farmland prices were making it harder to find quality land and high returns, and a lot of capital flow is moving to developing nations.

Some CSOs are using the media to paint an inaccurate and distorted picture of the World Bank Group’s work and they are questioning the motives of the conference, says the World Bank's Klaus Deininger.

Gaia Vince reviews "The Land Grabbers", a new book by Fred Pearce

Up to 90% of sub-Saharan Africa's land area is currently untitled. Without legal owners, this land falls to the state, which makes it easy to lease to foreign investors

Rich soil, a tropical climate, and an abundance of water: the region of Gambela in the west of the country is fertile. Foreign investors are renting thousands of hectares of it to develop intensive agriculture without regard for the environment and the population, reports Le Monde.

Under agreements with exporting countries in Africa, Europe and East Asia, GCC countries can cultivate large areas, which will pave the way for stabilizing food prices on the one hand, and reducing inflation on the other.

If you care, and you attend or attended college, it is your responsibility as a student or alumni to speak up and say that you care. If enough of us do so, they will listen!

Foreign investors aren't just after land in Africa. Access to water is essential – which can bring them into direct competition with the needs of local communities

While certain provisions in contracts can contain sensitive commercial information that may require a level of confidentiality, it does not justify keeping all information about large-scale agricultural projects outside the public domain.

"Ultimately, we want to see more, not less, investment in Australian agriculture for the benefit of our industry, but we need to be very clear about the motives," says Jock Laurie, head of Australia's National Farmers Federation

The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation pours $150 million into fund targeting farmland acquisitions in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia

Iowa agribusiness investor Bruce Rastetter is leading a project to turn as much as 800,000 acres [324,000 hectares] of land in the east African country of Tanzania into a massive grain-and-livestock operation.