While Oman has yet to indicate it will follow the course, it is in this make-or-break moment for a new, more stable capitalist system that the Gulf – and perhaps Oman in the future – are forging a rather novel form of global venture, that is, government-funded offshore farming.

Land acquisitions abroad are the only viable response, Mohammed Raouf, program manager of environment research at the Gulf Research Center, and others say.

In June 2018, Guyana’s Ministry of Agriculture unveiled an agreement with the Brazilian Agricultural Machinery and Research Institute that gives a green light to Brazilian investors lobbying for large tracts of lands in the Rupununi savannahs.

The commodity slump has cooled the global land rush. But land rights are still under pressure, requiring action at local to global levels.

New research examining the geographical coverage of international investment treaties raises concern about how they might affect public action to address 'land grabbing'.

The African agriculture sector is showing signs of improvements attributed to BRICS investment flows in smaller agricultural projects, reversing the trend triggered by the global food crisis in 2008.

Pambazuka News spoke to Anuradha Mittal, Jeff Furman and Frederic Mousseau about what prompted their research on large-scale investments in land in Africa and what they discovered.

Essentially, the Middle East is left with two choices. “The region has to import. The question is, invest abroad or rely on the free market?” said Dr Eckart Woertz, program manager in economics at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

Latest research conducted by the Public Trust Media Group on SOCFIN rubber plantations (SRC and LAC) has documented gross human rights violations.

Karuturi Global Limited, société holding de droit indien et dont le siège est situé à Bangalore, peut se retrouver sous la loupe de l'administration fiscale du Kenya pour fraude fiscale, mais les plaintes déposées contre elle vont plus loin.

"During my research trips in Africa, I came across posters against the land grab deals," Liberti told IPS. "One said: ‘Future generations will damn your graves, because you did not leave them any land.’"

New research presented at a major conference on global land grabbing, being held at IDS, reveals that the true extent of deals being struck for land in Africa is far greater than reported.

Los principios del BM, que serían totalmente voluntarios, intentan distraer del hecho de que la crisis alimentaria global de hoy en día con la cifra récord de más de mil millones de personas sufriendo hambre, no será resuelta por la agricultura industrial a gran escala que van a aplicar prácticamente todos los inversionistas que están adquiriendo tierra.

South Korea government has designated part of the Korea National Food Cluster, or Foodpolis, as a foreign investment zone (FIZ), making it easier for the cluster to attract global food firms seeking to set up a base in Northeast Asia.

European banks and pension funds continue to finance one of the largest and most destructive palm oil giants Wilmar International, according to new research released today by Friends of the Earth Europe.

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

Debates around farmland acquisition have focused mostly on how the phenomenon is playing out in the Global South. Much less attention has been paid to large-scale acquisitions of farmland in wealthier countries like Canada.

Agricultural analyst at Citi Investment Research, Tim Mitchell, recently calculated that "rural raiders" from overseas had spent "well in excess of $12 billion" over the past four years on Australian agribusinesses and farms.

Ernest Corea, a former senior consultant with the Washington-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), told IPS the surrender of nationally-owned farm land and land rights to foreign interests - whether individuals, the corporate sector or governments - amounts to an erosion of sovereignty.

The slaughter of people defending their land or environment continued unabated in 2017, with new research showing almost four people a week were killed worldwide in struggles against mines, plantations, poachers and infrastructure projects.

Australia is facing $43 billion foreign farming frenzy by Chinese companies, spurred by mounting food security needs and a push to “go global.”

Aprodev commissioned research to investigate the involvement of European Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in land grabs. The evidence shows that European DFIs are indeed involved in some land grabs, and there are real risks of being complicit in others in the future.

Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi feels a growing sense of unease these days. It stems from an email that Karuturi received on March 7. The sender wrote he had lost Rs 7 lakh by investing in Karuturi Global Ltd's shares.

La série de conférences Global AgInvesting, leader dans son secteur, arrive à Londres pour parler d'investissements responsables dans l'agriculture mondiale

Preliminary research indicates as much as 227 million hectares - about the size of Western Europe - may have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001.

The first issue of Development 54 starts the one year debate on sustainability by looking at the dilemma of the current global land grabs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

GRAIN says the World Bank's much anticipated report on the global farmland grab is both a disappointment and a failure.

Most people involved in land rights issues are likely to agree that the most abusive companies (and governments) should be vigorously prosecuted using national, regional and global legal fora.

Large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors, intended to improve global food security, had little to no benefit, increasing crop production in some areas while simultaneously threatening local food security in others.

China hosted African agricultural leaders for a forum to expand and deepen cooperation, investment, and trade with African agriculture over the next 3 years. And 11 project agreements were signed by government departments, international organizations, research units, and companies, adding to 115 agricultural projects that China has in two-thirds of African countries.