Certified by the RSPO in early 2020, Okomu’s motto is “responsible tropical agriculture.” But over the past decade, the company has been embroiled in disputes over land ownership and its use of Nigerian soldiers as a de facto security force for its plantations.

The global land rush has highlighted deep-seated tensions between competing visions of agriculture, food systems, territory and society.

In 2013, mammoth US investment company TIAA-CREF gave $5 million to the University of Illinois to fund a research center, branded with the company’s name, that would explore the financial niche of farmland investment.

Growing rush for land is destroying ecosystems and disrupting lives to satisfy global demand for goods, study warns

A fifth of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, are operating illegally inside forest areas that are off-limits to commercial agricultural activity, a new report from Greenpeace shows.

According to research by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which analysed 170 commodities, palm oil and cobalt are at “extreme” risk of land grabs

Africa’s Catholic bishops have criticized the appropriation of land, natural resources and other economic assets by private companies and called on national governments to show greater concern for local community rights and needs.

The rapid spread of oil palm plantations across Indonesia has spawned over 4,000 land conflicts, and the size of these plantations is doubling every decade. A new study, details the main causes of these conflicts and exposes the limited resources rural Indonesians have to seek resolution and redress for land loss.

Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar "come together in solidarity and fraternity to amplify the voices of African communities struggling for land justice"

A new report by Bread for all, Alliance Sud, and the German Network for Tax Justice has accused Belgian-French multinational Socfin, which operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West Africa, of shifting profits from Africa to Switzerland. The use of “transfer pricing” to avoid taxation is common among multinationals operating in Africa, depriving low-income governments of badly needed revenue.

President Irfaan Ali and his delegation wooed investors in the UAE to take advantage of opportunities in large-scale agriculture, including mega-farms, to support the UAE's food security agenda

À la veille de la réunion annuelle des banques publiques de développement à Rome, 280 groupes de 70 pays ont signé une lettre dénonçant leur financement de l'expansion de l'agriculture industrielle, de la destruction de l'environnement et du contrôle du système alimentaire par les entreprises.

On the eve of an annual gathering of public development banks, 280 groups from 70 countries sign letter slamming them for bankrolling the expansion of industrial agriculture.

The Hungarian government has officially canceled its plan to set up a EUR 400 million private equity fund to purchase farmland in the Central European region, including Slovakia, due to serious political tensions.

The EU is trying to move soya production from Brazil to eastern Europe where big conglomerates are buying up fertile land in the country, depleting soils, planting illegal GMOs and polluting fresh water sources.

More than a decade since the surge in large-scale land acquisitions worldwide, many land deals remain in limbo. They nonetheless have far-reaching consequences for those who depend on land as foundational to life.

The Agricultural Products Industrial Park, Port and New City in Kilwa, Tanzania involves 80,000 acres of land, and the companies have obtained a land use certificate from the Tanzania government.

An Auckland property developer is involved in a company linked to carrying out deforestation in Indonesia, where virgin rainforest is being bulldozed to grow palm oil plantations.

When palm companies arrived in Guatemala's northern lowlands, they did not evict people to plant palm, but did so strategically through "systematic dispossession".

An open letter has been sent to the AfDB and Nordic Development Fund, calling on them to take immediate action to address reprisals against a community in Uganda impacted by the Wadelai irrigation project.

Uganda's Non-Governmental Organization Bureau has suspended 54 organizations for alleged 'non-compliance', including Witness-Radio, which has been defending several communities whose lands have been grabbed by foreign agribusinesses.

Nigerian grassroots defender Ajele Sunday wanted dead for helping communities fight for their land against SOCFIN's subsidiary, Okomu Oil Palm Plantation in Edo State.

Australia’s second-biggest farmland investor has sold its Lawson Grains portfolio comprising 105,000 hectares of crop land in NSW and Western Australia to Sydney-based global forestry investment manager New Forests and Canada’s Alberta Investment Management Corporation.

In July 2021, a French court ruled against a group of Indigenous Bunong farmers from Mondulkiri in Northeastern Cambodia. In light of recent discussions on the potential and constraints of legal activism, we aim here to highlight entrenched structural factors that can hinder communities in legal challenges to corporate land grabs.

In the country known as the “breadbasket of Europe,” agriculture has been dominated by oligarchs and multinational corporations since the privatization of state-owned land following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Will this change, now that a controversial law to create a land market entered into effect on July 1, 2021?

Reporting by Agência Pública has revealed how investors including U.S. pension funds and an Argentine agribusiness giant may be linked to illegal land deals and deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region.

Korean palm oil giant, Korindo has been rejected from the world's green certification body in the wake of a BBC investigation. Korindo controls more land in Papua than any other conglomerate. The company has cleared nearly 60,000 hectares of forests inside its concessions - an area the size of Chicago or Seoul.

While the governments chant the mantra of "leaving no one behind", it is ironic that they are abetting corporate grabbing of land and resources, which is pushing farmers out of agriculture.

Banks, retirement funds, retail investors, boutique asset managers, and even some nonprofits and universities are doubling down on farmland investments, making it increasingly difficult for farmers of color to access land.

Local communities hold a press conference today to protest against the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil certificate awarded to Socfin’s subsidiary company SAFACAM in Cameroon on 30 December 2020