A focus on agricultural productivity should not become a cover for foreign private companies to grab land or impose expensive, input-intensive methods in the name of modernisation.

"Finance Minister Yousef Hussein Kamal said he had personally been traveling to Vietnam, Cambodia, Yemen, Sudan, Tajikistan, and elsewhere to look into investing in agricultural production for the Qatari market," reports the US Embassy in Doha about a visit from US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

The truth is that if exploitation of a developing country’s natural resources by the West is colonialism, so it is when rich countries of the South do the same.

In the past week, the alleged claim by Egypt’s Agriculture minister Amin Abaza that Uganda offered his country over 2 million acres of fertile land to produce wheat to feed the Arab nation’s 81 million people has rattled Ugandans.

A decade after capitalism transformed Russian industry, an agricultural revolution is stirring the countryside. The change is being driven by soaring global food prices (the price of wheat alone rose 77 percent last year) and a new reform allowing foreigners to own agricultural land. Together, they have created a land rush in rural Russia.

Cru, a small specialist fund management firm, recently launched a Malawi-based fund called Africa Invest. The fund has made an initial investment of £2m in 2,000 hectares of land that’s producing paprika for western supermarkets. With land prices starting at £800 per hectare (compared to £10,000 in the UK) it’s relatively easy to amass large farms that can be upgraded with new technology, mechanisation and better production methods. According to Cru, annual returns on capital should exceed 30 to 40 per cent.

Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.

With their huge populations, China and India exert an unparalleled force on world food markets. They are looking abroad as it becomes more difficult for them to be self-sufficient -- and the increasing demand often has disastrous consequences across the globe.

“MPs want ActionAid to keep off”, screams the caption of a story in the East African Standard of January 3, 2006. The story is attributed to MPs Oburu Odinga and Ayiecho Olweny who claim that the NGO is inciting residents of trouble ridden Yala Swamp rice scheme in which American investor Dominion Group of Companies has been embroiled in a tussle with the community over issues of land dispossession

Farmers in Uzbekistan say the government is forcing them to surrender land to Chinese businesses under the guise of state-backed development, taking thousands of hectares of fertile cotton and wheat fields out of the hands of locals.

Agricultural ventures feature prominently, with Shandong Jialejia Agriculture committing Sh3.9 billion to a 500,000-hen egg farm in Kajiado, Zonken Group investing Sh41.6 billion in a 300-acre aloe vera processing plant in Baringo and Sh10.4 billion for a 72-acre grape vineyard.

The Liberian government has taken legal action against former union leaders of the Salala Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia following violent protests at the Salala Rubber Corporation in Margibi County on June 27, 2024.

Rusting pipes in a barren field and unpaid workers are what remain after a U.S. company promised to turn a huge piece of land in Senegal — about twice the size of Paris — into an agricultural project and create thousands of jobs.

Peruvian Agriculture Minister Angel Manero on Monday announced some $24 billion in largely public-private projects to improve irrigation in the Andean nation, as the government looks to expand its farmlands by some one million hectares

The Ondo State Government has concluded plans to set up farm clusters and 2,000 hectares of farmland in each senatorial district of the state that will be run by the private sector

How thousands of Indonesian soldiers are forcing through a vast agricultural project in indigenous lands and forests

Threats, intimidation and armed militias prevent the free movement of community residents in their own territories. The Collective of Traditional Peoples and Communities of the Cerrado denounces violence by land grabbers, who are supported by sectors of the state.

The Jah Agric Farm in Bayaba, Gambia, initiated by Jah Oil Company, is to farm rice, potato, and onion imports on 1,200 hectares, with plans to expand to 15,000 hectares nationwide.

The food estate in Merauke - spanning more than two million hectares - seems set to join the long list of such projects that have failed since the concept was first proposed in 2010, only to leave behind broad damage to the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment, including the loss of customary land belongs to 40,000 indigenous people.

A new report on land grabbing exposes the vulnerability of farmers and citizens to arbitrary abuse of the law when developers and the state lay claim to their farms and homes for commercial gain.

A total 4,000 hectares of land was allocated by the Ekiti State governor to young farmers in the “Bring Back the Youth in Agriculture” scheme done in partnership with an investor, YSJ Farm in Oke Ako.

Almarai is venturing into seafood and red meat as part of a nearly $5 billion programme to expand its food empire

A trio of dairy farms spanning a combined 570 hectares in the state’s north have been listed for sale after more than a decade in the hands of Swedish owners.

One Chinese company that has joined Laos' durian rush is Jiarun, an infrastructure builder that has vowed to establish the world's largest durian plantation in Attapeu, a remote province in southern Laos, on 5,000 ha it has secured on a 50-year lease from the Laotian government.

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, has invested $100 million to buy a 9.8% stake in Adecoagro, a agro-tech firm in Latin America.

The Liberian Investigator has confirmed that the Socfin Group has sold the Salala Rubber plantation to Jeety Rubber following weeks of violent protests at the company’s facilities and years of serious criticism from Green Advocates and international rights groups for reportedly causing significant harm to local communities, including land grabbing, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses.

San Isidro is not just a land grab case of a company being favored by the state. Here, the death of the people carries the name of a transnational-- Amway.

Civil society groups working on land-related issues and women land rights defenders from different communities in Uganda are meeting in Kampala to devise ways to strengthen women’s participation and decision-making in land governance.

The new policy will address post-war conflict over land rights, land grabbing, urban informal settlements as well as conflicts over access to land with pasture and water. Land grabbing, which is the acquisition without regard for the interests of the rights holders, and disagreements regarding county and payam boundaries, will be addressed by the policy.

When the industrial agriculture investor Agilis Partners targeted the lands of Kiryandongo for its investments, residents never knew that the company would empoly several tactics to force them out. One of them was sexual violence.