Pursuing its strategy of penetrating the Middle East market, the company has set up a special committee to study the possibility to increase exports to the region. So far, the company has signed a farming contract with Bahrain for supplying food products.

The growing financialisation of Brazilian agribusiness is enabling foreign investment in the industry most responsible for deforestation - and land grabbing

“It is the height of stupidity for our country to bargain our lands for the sake of other nation’s food security, while being dependent on importation for our very own food security needs,” says Rafael Mariano

Given the power imbalances at play, it is folly to assume that land-seekers will suddenly embrace, en masse, a set of voluntary rules promoting sustainable and equitable investor practices, says Michael Kugelman

UAE foreign investment in food production have so far focused on leasing Pakistan and Sudan’s agricultural land, with new prospects in Cambodian rice, Canadian wheat and Australian beef. Alongside the strategic deals at the national level, private investment has followed which should open new channels of trade, for example, Al Qudra Holding has plans to grow grain and vegetables in Vietnam and Croatia as well as Pakistan.

A focus on agricultural productivity should not become a cover for foreign private companies to grab land or impose expensive, input-intensive methods in the name of modernisation.

The Association of Women Living Alongside Socapalm Edéa (AFRISE), whose rights have been violated by Socapalm in Edéa, take their demands to the President of Cameroon

The much-discussed Congo land-lease, granting 200,000 hectares to South African farmers with a further 10 million hectares in the balance, appears to mark a departure from the usual terms underpinning foreign acquisition of fertile land by multinationals

Hassad Food knows how to shop. The $1b subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund finalised a $500m agreement last year to grow wheat & rice on 100,000 ha in Sudan and has announced plans to invest $700m worldwide this year.

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.

Bloomberg exposé on Frank Timis' plan to turn Les Fermes de la Teranga (ex-Senhuile) into a major source of animal feed for the Gulf States and the implications for Dakar's water supply

Eritrean law blocking foreign investors from owning land and the country's desire for self-reliance makes it highly unlikely that it will fall for the neocolonial phenomenon of land grabbing.

"The Chinese want a secure food supply, and they're coming into New Zealand to do that, by the look of it," a local farm union official says

Land grabs in Canada have not been well-documented. Provinces do not keep inventory on large-scale land acquisitions. This blind eye approach has some people, particularly farmers, worried.

Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) recently had an opportunity to interview affected community representatives and leaders who fled their homes in Gambela and Lower Omo because of government land grabs.

Malaysia's biggest company Sime Darby has struck a deal with the Liberian government to develop oil palm and rubber estates in West African nation as land runs out at home and global demand for palm oil surges.

Throughout Merauke Regency in the southern part of West Papua, a land controversially annexed by Indonesia 50 years ago, indigenous communities are having to learn fast how to resist corporate manipulations.

Laos has approached Thailand as a partner in a joint venture with Kuwait to grow rice in Laos. The Lao government has allocated 200,000ha.

Ethiopia must harness its enormous agricultural potential, not by selling it off as a cheap commodity, but by supporting farmers in growing culturally appropriate crops for domestic markets, using agro-ecologically sustainable farming methods.

Internationally-funded Guatemalan palm oil and sugar cane interests evict Mayan Qeqchi families from their historic lands, destroying homes and crops, killing one, injuring more, while thousands are without food or shelter.

In four years, Hassad Foods has accumulated 255,000 hectares of agricultural land with the aim of producing 165,000 tonnes of grain and 100,000 lambs annually.

As climate change, population growth and environmental damage shrink the amount of arable land on the planet, wealthier countries and corporations look to developing countries for land.

The case is significant as it could change the way community displacement in the wake of large-scale land deals is tested and prosecuted

Despite a federal law requiring foreign transactions of agricultural land be reported to and recorded by the government, the US Department of Agriculture’s database appears to be missing significant acres of land.

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.

The Congo ventures are not core businesses to be based in the Congo but instead, extensions of businesses located in South Africa

TIAA is among the largest institutional investors in agriculture, with investments in more than 400 farms in North America, South America, Australia, and Eastern Europe as part of its General Account.

Today, more than a quarter of all the land in Liberia is leased or owned by logging, mining, or factory-style agriculture companies. Nothing is wrong with that — unless you happen to be one of the people who used to live on that land.

Civil society, including African farmers unions, need to educate local people that such land deals are not in their interests, however couched in 'win-win' terminology they appear to be.

MCC is playing a key role in commodifying Africa’s farmlands