Major farmland investors such as banks and pension funds must stop facilitating land grabs, civil society groups on the eve of a global farmland investment conference in London on December 3-5, have said.

For all the willing buyers seeking tracts of Australian farm land, local investors are not among them. They wonder what all the fuss is about.

Chinese property development conglomerate Shanghai Zhongfu has won the sole right to develop 15,200ha of high-value irrigated agricultural land in northern Australia..

Of the many issues brought to the table at the Slow Food joint Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre event this week in Turin, Italy, one of the most pressing is land-grabbing.

Logging companies in PNG are using special agricultural leases to clear vast tracts of rainforest timber, on the promise of roads and economic development for remote villages. Jemima Garrett investigates.

In debate over large scale investments in agriculture in Australia, there are some broader issues about foreign investment that don’t seem to get talked about enough.

The sale of Cubbie Station to a Chinese-led consortium has divided Australia on the issue of foreign investment.

China’s giant sovereign wealth fund is looking to make its first significant investment in the Australian dairy industry, as it tries to lock up food ­supplies for its growing middle class.

Since Jane Mendillo took over the endowment in July 2008, Harvard’s holdings of forests, farms and other natural resources in Brazil as well as in New Zealand and Romania have grown to about 10 percent of the portfolio -- more than $3 billion -- and she wants to add more.

When a Chinese investor bought a farm outside this village a few years back, he was pleased enough to name it Golden Land. The soil was rich, the sunshine and rain bountiful. The land, deep in rural Russia, was also largely devoid of people. No more.

As the amount of investor-owned farmland grows in Saskatchewan, so do concerns about foreign ownership and loopholes in the province’s farmland ownership regulations.

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.

Indigenous communities are under threat from a recent spurt of investors and multinational companies interested in putting their money into Kenyan oil, mining, wind farms and agribusiness projects.

Between the farmers and Olam lies one of Lao’s most powerful, and some allege, corrupt families, the Siphandones.

SLC Agricola, the Brazil farm operator with large ambitions in farmland acquisition, sealed a $239m cash injection from UK fund manager Valiance Asset Management for a business aimed at turning scrub into "high-quality" farms.

A pension fund(!) has seeded(!) a new company (i.e., not a fund!) that will invest its own assets as well as those of peers(!) in actual farms(!) in the developed and developing world!

The Financial Times reported this week that TIAA-CREF is developing a new “investment vehicle” that will bet the retirement funds of millions of American on the rising price of farmland around the world.

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

Two international organisations, Oxfam and Uganda Land Alliance (ULA), face de-registration for what government calls inciting violence over land issues.

With the purchase of nearly 15,000ha of land in Jerramungup last month, the Qatar-based Hassad Food Company now owns 250,000ha of farmland in Austalia

Indigenous people fear collective retaliation by government security forces.

Investment managers meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in New York said rising US farmland prices were making it harder to find quality land and high returns, and a lot of capital flow is moving to developing nations.

Senator believes a revision of foreign investment rules must adequately consider the changing nature of national sovereignty, in the face of a mounting global food security task.

Food shortages and rural deprivation exacerbated by World Bank policy, says NGO ahead of land and poverty conference

Largest cut flower exporter Karuturi Global ventures into food business

The scariest aspect of this unfolding phenomenon is that despite the foreseeable terrible consequences, the appetite among the rich countries to own a piece of this developing-country fertile land continues to grow, turning to an ugly competition.

The Canadian–based businessman has increased his Marion County land holdings in the past two years nearly sixfold, making him the largest private property owner in the county with 29,000 acres.

Russia is willing to discuss leasing farm land in the Far East to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member countries. The Ministry for Economic Development has stated that a group of 20 projects is intended to bring in tens of billions of dollars in investments.