Pakistan’s ambassador to the Kingdom has called on Saudis to invest in his country’s agricultural sector.

News of the deal has aroused very vehement protest from the Sudanese Farmer’s Union and the tenants in the Gezira Scheme.

The government of Brazil is studying the possibility of prohibiting the purchase of land by foreigners. A discussion with the journalist who broke the news, Mauro Zanatto.

The Ethiopian government’s ambitious target of harvesting 28 million tonnes of cereals in the first three quarters of the 2007/2008 budget year has failed. Authorities seem determined to change this situation by leasing huge chunks of land to other sovereign states for mechanised farming.

Sources close to Al-Amoudi said that the king has shown an interest in seeing other Saudi companies involved in rice farming after seeing the samples presented by Al-Amoudi

For the world’s people to have secure access to the quantity and quality of food needed for a decent life, the land grabs and the development of large, highly mechanized factory farms must stop.

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.

Area nearly the size of France purchased, leased for food production around the world Africa, South America, parts of Europe targeted by cash-rich, food-poor nations

A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

The global rush to acquire agricultural land in bountiful Africa evokes concern and protests.

An ABC Rural investigation reveals the extent of the creep of foreign ownership in the Top End, particularly over the past three years.

A slew of countries and investors — from Chinese state corporations to Gulf sheiks to Wall Street firms — have started buying up farmland overseas, in an apparent attempt to acquire as much precious soil and water as possible.

Despite the African Union's commitment to strengthening women's access and control of land by placing land rights in the domain of human rights, it is silent on the issue of land grabs. This is a gap that the AU needs to plug.

Dalla Al Baraka, a Saudi conglomerate with $5 billion in annual revenue, has acquired two million acres of farmland in eastern Sudan to produce food for export to the Middle Eastern kingdom. While the investors are hoping to wean Saudi Arabia off imports from South America, such agreements cause concern among local Sudanese farmers.