The Journal of Peasant Studies, in collaboration with the Land Deal Politics Initiative, is organizing an international academic workshop on ‘Global Land Grabbing’ to be held on 6-8 April 2011 at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

The World Bank is marching ahead with plans to facilitate global land grabs, while not releasing a report that confirms the negative impacts of these deals for local communities.

"Investors like Citadel Capital and Goldman Sachs must be stopped from acquiring large tracts of land in Africa because this practice has become a serious threat to the continent's food sovereignty"

La Banque mondiale entend poursuivre ses efforts pour favoriser l’accaparement mondial des terres et refuse de publier une étude confirmant les effets néfastes de ces transactions sur les communautés locales.

Agriculture is suddenly on every end investor’s radar, and many are dipping their toes in the water through pure farmland investment.

“It’s not common in Brazil to find farmers presenting accounts to international investors. What you can see here is the new model for agribusiness in Brazil,” says André Pessôa, co-ordinator of the Rally da Safra.

The Congo ventures are not core businesses to be based in the Congo but instead, extensions of businesses located in South Africa

20 pays africains vendent ou louent des terres pour l’agriculture intensive sur une échelle choquante dans ce qui pourrait bien être le plus grand changement de propriété depuis l’époque coloniale. Enquête de John Vidal.

A planned large-scale food production system in Merauke, Papua province, aimed at improving national food sustainability, could prove detrimental for locals, an activist says.

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

Runaway farmland and borderland giveaway deals need to be publicly scrutinized to ensure transparency (detect corruption and criminality) and to make certain that private interests (sweetheart deals) have not overtaken the public interest, or secret deals are not made to harm the Ethiopian national interest.

Yemen, grappling with poverty and a resurgent al Qaeda, is in talks with Saudi firms interested in acquiring farms or investing in fishery and livestock production with a first deal eyed by June.

A discussion note prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNCTAD and the World Bank Group to contribute to an ongoing global dialogue.

A foreign company intends to clear 10 000 hectares of land in the Bwabwata National Park in northern Namibia in order to set up a large-scale irrigation scheme for crop farming

The Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors said that Saudi businesspeople were keen to invest in Turkey, particularly in agriculture. “The Kingdom has a huge program involving billions of riyals for agricultural investment in countries with fertile soil and plentiful water.”

Accaparement des terres - cas de l'Indonésie - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas de la Zambie - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas du Soudan - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas du Mali - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas du Madagascar - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas de l'Inde - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas de l'Ethiopie - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - Cas de la République Démocratique du Congo - par AGTER

Accaparement des terres - cas du Congo-Brazzaville - par AGTER

Most wealthy Arab nations are still "reluctant" to invest heavily in farming projects in fertile member states for political and security reasons, says AOAD, a key Arab League organisation.

Paper for FAO on the growing interest of private sector investors in developing country agriculture, including farmland acquisitions.

The much-discussed Congo land-lease, granting 200,000 hectares to South African farmers with a further 10 million hectares in the balance, appears to mark a departure from the usual terms underpinning foreign acquisition of fertile land by multinationals

The list of Indian companies that have purchased land in Africa is quite long and includes companies in businesses ranging from agriculture and horticulture to engineering and metals.

Over the next couple of weeks we will see a level of political frenzy let loose on the international stage.

There’s a whole school of economic thought that says that Collier is wrong, that big is not necessarily better in agriculture — and that the land deals therefore might be unwise not because they’re wrong but because they’re unprofitable.