The landgrab heats up, and the neocolonialists stake their claims.

Representatives from the Ministries of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, Finance, and Transportation will participate in a forum on November 14-15 [2009] in Addis Ababa to officially mark the beginning of a cooperative project under which Ethiopia made one million hectares of land available for Saudi private companies to develop.

De Jager is most excited about an impending Agri SA fact-finding mission to Libya at the invitation of President Muammar Gaddafi. "If we succeed there, we can succeed anywhere in Africa."

A United Arab Emirates company will sign a deal with Egypt to cultivate 100,000 feddans, about 42,000 hectares, of land with wheat, corn and feed, the official news agency Mena reported on Tuesday.

There may emerge a situation when Ukrainians will be starving in spite of having the most fertile black earth.

A scramble by wealthy states to snap up developing world farmland to ensure their own food security -- especially in Africa -- could trigger conflict in poorer countries, World Food Programme deputy executive director Sheila Sisulu said on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt. "I fear... conflict," she said.

An investor analysis of the case for buying up farmland

The Philippine agriculture department has assured that the government’s bid to attract foreign investments to farm ventures will not compromise the country’s food security and self-sufficiency targets.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) wants to create exclusive economic zones for agribusiness that would take into consideration the nuances of food production and an expanded set of incentives for locators.

Land grabbing and food speculation are not just overseas phenomena; they are also happening in North America.

More than 20 million hectares of farmland in Africa and Latin America are now in the hands of foreign governments and companies, a sign of a global "land grab" that got a boost from last year's food crisis.

Malagasy farmers have backed a move by the country's new president to stop a $6 billion land deal with South Korea's Daewoo Logistics, saying it would have come at the expense of local people's needs for land.

The UN’s food security expert, Olivier de Schutter, has called for a “code of conduct” to regulate the purchase of swathes of farmland across Africa, Asia and Latin America by Gulf states and private companies pursuing agribusiness.

Saudi investors launched agricultural projects in Indonesia worth $1.3 billion last year, a top business official said on Monday, as the world's top oil exporter seeks to secure food supplies from abroad.

Vietnam Rubber Group, the nation’s largest producer and exporter, plans to plant 200,000 hectares of trees in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, betting on a rebound in global demand in the next decade.

Some fear that the land grabs could worsen poverty because few benefits will flow to the poorer host countries, and small farmers could lose out. Although the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is drawing up guidelines to protect their interests, it is far from clear whether anyone will follow them.

Bahrain wants to invest in rice farmland in the Philippines, the world's top importer of the grain, in a move to boost food security as global food supplies become increasingly expensive, traders said on Wednesday.

Rattled by rapidly rising global grain prices, China is looking at strategies to ensure long-term food security for its 1.3 billion people such as procuring farmland overseas and opposing the formation of any international grain price-fixing monopolies.