The private sector needs to double investment in the land itself to help drive agricultural development in countries that need it most, say the heads of EBRD and FAO

Activists are fighting to introduce or strengthen laws intended to give women more secure access to land and are combating social norms and practices that stand in their way.

From the World Bank to pension funds, efforts are under way to regulate land grabs through the creation of codes and standards. Rather than help financial and corporate elites to "responsibly invest" in farmland, we need them to stop and divest.

Britain is the world’s biggest centre for private land grabbers.

The Nevada US firm Farm Lands of Africa has, after two years, accelerated its development into an agricultural producer by buying a rice-to-eucalyptus group in the Republic of Guinea with a landbank of 220,000 hectares, an area nearly the size of Luxembourg.

BFS has a land bank of 220,000 hectares under a Protocol d’Accord from the government of the Republic of Guinea

Overview of the palm oil sector in West Africa - major players (Siva, SIAT, Sime Darby, SIFCA, Bolloré, Olam...), hectarage under foreign corporate control, etc.

Jessica Mutch spoke to Fred Pearce in London about the Crafar farm buy-up by a Chinese company and whether New Zealand should be nervous about land grabbing.

Resource conflicts are building in the southernmost part of West Papua, as agribusiness companies stealthily invade the forests, leaving its people dispossessed.

Herakles says it will provide locals with steady work, roads and health care. But critics call the planned plantation, which would cover Fabe and at least 30 other forest villages in Cameroon, a land grab. Special report from Reuters.

Volgens een rapport van FIAN, TNI en anderen is Europa sterk betrokken bij de aankoop van landbouwgrond en landbouw-infrastructuur. Rechtstreeks door Europese investeerders, maar ook door het Europese beleid dat leidt tot ‘land-grabs’.

Some of the major factors drawing companies from India to Africa in addition to the fertile land and natural resources are the exemption from taxes/duties, along with ample government assistance.

“The destruction and grabbing of resources from peasants and poor people have intensified and if we are to succeed in defending our land, territory and our very future, we need to come together and identify clearly the kind of Agrarian Reform we are looking for and the strategy for which we achieve it.”

The Indonesian government’s long-discussed plan to launch a massive food estate in Merauke, Papua, in a bid to boost the nation’s food production is facing uncertainty amid land acquisition problems, a top ministry official says.

Palm oil is the world’s cheapest edible oil and a key ingredient in some biofuels. Global demand is booming and agri-corporations are grabbing large swathes of land to expand palm oil production in a new frontier: Africa.

"Africa will be more food insecure if these investments go to other parts of the world and Africa has to turn to those places to buy food," according to Dr Ousmane Badiane of IFPRI

Many in India's eastern state of West Bengal worry the central government's decision to allow foreign direct investment in retail trade would incur loss of jobs even farmers' land.

Farmland is "an obvious no-brainer choice for most pension funds," according to Savills director of residential research Yolande Barnes.

International development and environment charities to protest against 'land grab' outside Agriculture Investment Summit

As Europe's debt crisis rattles global equity market confidence farming is being increasingly championed by many as a sound, long-term bet for investors needing a safe haven for their money - particularly superannuation funds.

The company may invest as much as 200 billion CFA francs ($380 million) to develop industrial palm-oil plantations and processing facilities in Ivory Coast within five years.

Cevital, Algeria’s biggest sugar producer, asked Ivory Coast’s government to make land available for the production of rice, sugar, maize and vegetable oil, according to a company official.

A collection of leases for farmland in Sierra Leone in which Kevin Godlington of the UK was involved.

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

South African group Illovo Sugar has pulled out of a 2.6 billion rand sugar project in Mali, largely due to political risk and also funding difficulties, and will focus on growth opportunities elsewhere in Africa.

Six foreign-owned companies are currently trying to secure over 1 million hectares (about 2.5 million acres) of land for the production of palm oil in the country's forested southern zone, according to a coalition of environmental organisations.

The science and environment author discusses a growing global threat

Indigenous Papuans are reeling from the cut-price sale of the land and forests that are their lifeblood

In this extract from his book The Landgrabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth, Fred Pearce witnesses the relentless plundering by intensive commercial farmers of Brazil’s rich savannah

Indian-listed Karuturi Global, which has leased land in Ethiopia for commercial farming, plans to export cereals, sugar and edible oil to South Sudan and Kenya upon completing cultivation in 2014.