The Governor of Nigeria's Nasarawa State says the implementation of the Framework for Responsible Investment in Land-Intensive Agriculture (FRILIA), part of a World Bank economic transformation agenda programme, will attract large-scale private agricultural investments.

"In Edo State, we have a huge farmland, and one of the new initiatives we put out there is piggery, and we have a strategy that we are rolling out, hoping that in the next eight months, we will be the largest pig farm in Nigeria."

Researchers say the construction of a dam and sugarcane plantations has dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River.

Some community members accuse Socfin of land-grabbing and pollution. We visited the company’s plantation in Malen to find out what’s happening beneath the palm fronds.

There is a common and well-known philosophy throughout Papua, which represents the strong bond between women and nature; “Land is Mama”. We might suspect that it sounds like a romantic attachment of the stereotype of domestic work to one gender. However, it is reflected in what these Indigenous women, who fight for their land are doing.

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.

Outrage over a mass displacement for a dairy farm has seized the national conversation in Zimbabwe, where it is impossible to talk about land without interrogating the legacy of colonialism and the present reality of anti-Blackness

Major multinational companies including Nestlé and Cargill may be sourcing Nicaraguan beef from indigenous regions consumed by land grabs, settler occupation and mass deforestation.

In May 2016, awasMIFEE published a story titled “The Salim Group’s secret plantations in West Papua”, about four concessions owned by the Salim Group in West Papua. A year and a half later, Salim Group is still aggressively expanding, and threatening more areas of remote Papuan forest.

A lucrative agro-industrial crop like palm oil, in a context of entrenched corruption and an authoritarian regime, lends itself to land grabbing and agrarian violence.

BNDES will open its first Africa office as it looks to finance the expansion of Brazilian companies across the continent

"In a world where war is provoked by food scarcity, farmers are the peacekeepers. No surprise, then, so many regimes want more of them," writes a journalist visiting the South African farmers taking up farming in Georgia.

The entrepreneur has a plan for land preservation that actually makes money. Now he just has to prove it.

De Jager is worried about Libya’s record in enforcing contracts with foreign companies, and the lack of social support networks. “There’s a lot of money to be made for someone with balls,” he says.

It is not clear whether a strategy is in place to ensure that part of the food produced by the rich food importers farms will be sold locally.

These arrangements are reminiscent of “banana republics” when many African countries served as plantations for European countries -- but even those did not come with such explicit restrictions and rigidities.

Kenya has revealed plans to lease large tracts of land to Israeli investors for wheat production, marking a renewed agricultural venture after an earlier Israeli-led maize project at the Galana-Kulalu irrigation scheme failed.

Following its acquisition of 17,954 ha from the Edo State government for palm oil cultivation, Dufil Prima Foods has embarked on a crop compensation payment to 1,628 farmers across 14 communities.

NGOs in Sarawak and around the world report failures by the Sarawak government to uphold indigenous land rights, and failures by international banks and investors to ensure their investments are conflict-free.

The World Bank’s board has granted an East African agribusiness project called SAGCOT a waiver that exempts it from following the bank’s Indigenous Peoples Policy — sparking fears among human rights advocates that the development lender is setting a precedent that weakens protections for indigenous peoples.

Financial investors own tracts that grow maize and soya beans in Illinois and Uruguay, almonds and cattle in Australia, and sugar beets and wheat in Poland. Some are venturing into countries with potentially volatile politics, such as Ethiopia and Ukraine.

One Thousand & One Voices (1K1V) — a US-based private capital fund backed by some influential family investors — is on the hunt for opportunities in the sub-Saharan Africa agricultural sector.

Old Mutual Investment Group is targeting agricultural investments in Africa through Futuregrowth, an asset management affiliate of Old Mutual.

The collaboration of the two companies is part of the overall development of Amatheon’s already 40 000 hectares titled farm block.

The IFC will invest $20m for a 19.7% stake in Zambian farmland operator Agrivision, with existing equity partner Norfund and Zeder topping up their respective investments.

Zimbabwe's Parliament has ordered Arda board chairman Basil Nyabadza to clarify the status of the land at the centre of an ownership wrangle between Green Fuel and the Chisumbanje community.

The pilot farm, which will serve as a prelude to a bigger 4,000 hectares cassava farm by Flour Mills of Nigeria and other investors, is supported by the USAID.

Nedbank Capital head of Africa business Zhann Meyer referred to a number of recent acquisitions in the sector, concluding that "the livelihoods, ways of life and culture of millions of Africans are at risk".

Agri-Vie, a private equity fund focused on food and agribusiness investments in sub-Saharan Africa, announces it has acquired a 63% stake in South Africa's largest table olive supplier.

The South African government appears to have abandoned the notion that foreigners should not own land in SA by proposing that foreigners enjoy freehold title but with conditions applied.