Vaughan-Smith and his team of seven professionals are scouting for commercial farms in five countries — Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia — where conditions are deemed to be the most favorable.

A tribe of hunter gatherers living in trees in the forests of Papua, near the planned Merauke food estate where Wilmar and other firms plan to get farmland, has been discovered officially for the first time.

Evidence suggests a marked disparity in the benefits received by those involved in and affected by these transnational land acquisitions, particularly for those originally dwelling on the land.

ASSOCHAM, India's apex industry body, has sent a proposal to the external affairs ministry offering to act as facilitator to help Indian farmers get farmland in Africa.

In Cambodia, an assessment of the impact of foreign farmland acquisitions has been hampered by a lack of data, including the total number of concessions awarded and an accurate set of GPS coordinates for each concession, the World Bank says.

Wary of fluctuations on Wall Street, more wealthy Americans, private funds and foreigners are putting money into parcels of cornfields, fruit orchards and other US agricultural products.

The anxiety expressed in some farming quarters and the daily media about Australian farms becoming dominated by foreign corporations and governments fails to recognise that the coming and going of overseas investors has always been part of rural property transactions.

African governments should avoid rushing into big land lease deals with foreign investors or risk deepening poverty and ramping up social tensions, an official at the UN's Food and Agriculture Office said

India and Mauritius have resumed discussions over a proposal to hand over the twin islands of Agalega to India for tourism development and possibly agriculture.

Recent business delegations from Iran and Qatar expressed strong interest in buying farmland in Uruguay to develop their own production projects.

Brazil shocked foreign investors when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was concerned about Brazilian land falling into foreign hands.

Australia's center-left Labor government said Tuesday it will examine foreign ownership of the country's rural land and agricultural food production in response to a spate of takeovers that have triggered anxiety about job losses and broader concerns about food security.

Gulf nations need to step up investments in African and South East Asian farmland if the region is to play its part in averting a global food crisis, agriculture experts say.

Bangladeshi authorities have started exploring new options to ensure the country's food security such as taking lease of vast areas of fallow agricultural land in the neighbouring Myanmar and in some African states.

The seizing of the poor farmers' land is destroying their only hope of survival on earth.

Finding suitable farmland investment vehicles is not as easy as one might think.

In Ethiopia, resentments over land grab have already started claiming lives. The TPLF regime has already killed 10 protesting ethnic Anuak farmers and has sent thousands more to concentration camps.

Foreign investment in Australia's food chain is increasing at a rate that is causing concern, and not just for people on the land.

Investors are buying Canadian agricultural land, betting that rising food prices, a ballooning global population and growing worldwide scarcities in farmland will mean a payoff for them.

Parliament is calling on the Productivity Commission to review the recent surge in foreign investment in farming, focusing on its effects on the economy and food security.

World food security fears may be driving the foreign rush to buy Australian farmland and agribusinesses, says Nationals' leader, Warren Truss.

President Jose Mujica said that private land sales will be honoured but under no conditions will sovereign funds or foreign countries be allowed to purchase land in Uruguay as is happening in Africa.

The Australian Parliament has moved to quell some of the anxieties surrounding a perceived foreign buy-up of local land, last week passing a motion regarding foreign ownership of agricultural land and agribusiness.

The Republic of Congo has handed over 80,000 ha of arable land to a company owned and operated by 14 South African farmers.

Southeast Asian palm oil firms like Malaysia's Sime Darby and Singapore's Golden Agri Resources are backpacking to Africa, in what could be the planet’s next trend-setter in inter-continental resource trade.

Foreign ownership of Australian land and agribusiness will soon be monitored.

David Murrin, CIO at Emergent Asset Management, stresses the difficulties of jumping aboard the African growth story. "It is very hard to take advantage of the tremendous growth in African agriculture and that's why private equity investment is so important, it helps capture some of that growth," he says.

Government-backed companies, as Hassad Food, have begun buying up farmland around the world, with Australia’s vast tracts of top quality primary production land a prime target.

Local stock and station agents in Western District Australia estimate the Qatar government paid a premium of up to 20 per cent in order to secure the controversial deal,

The buy-up of prime agricultural land by Shenhua has sparked a furious political debate in Australia