Agriculture, long overlooked as a handy defensive investment space by fund managers more interested in infrastructure, commercial real estate and shopping centres, has become the focus of big spending activity of late.

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.

Investigation into the controversial palm oil sector in Liberia, the role of Dutch finance and impacts on local communities

CEFF II raised $1 billion from a group of institutional investors, mostly pension funds, to invest in high-tech greenhouses, indoor, vertical farms, and other sectors that need controlled environment agriculture facilities.

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.

An Australian company backed by Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board has purchased a grain farm in Yuna, Australia for about $30 million

Une bataille juridique a éclaté sur la propriété des Plantations et Huileries du Congo, une entreprise qui contrôle plus de 100 000 hectares de terres pour des plantations de palmier à huile en République démocratique du Congo.

After acquiring majority ownership in the PHC plantations from European development banks in 2020, former partners have turned on each other with legal action underway across four jurisdictions for control of the company, valued at US$100 million.

Quienes actualmente controlan los flujos financieros del mundo no son capaces de apoyar a los productores de alimentos y a los sistemas alimentarios —que pueden combatir la crisis climática o las muchas otras crisis que afectan a la alimentación y a la agricultura. Nuestro desafío es lograr que tanto las tierras agrícolas como el dinero no sigan en sus manos, tan pronto como podamos.

New information indicates that Feronia's $15 million rice operations were taken over by a politically connected Belgian-Congolese businessman when they mysteriously vanished from the company's books in 2017.

PSP, one of Canada's largest pension investment managers, now adds a further 40,000 hectares to its large farmland holdings in New South Wales.

Carbon credits and net-zero pledges are fuelling a new round of farmland buying by billionaires and pension funds that will undermine real climate action.

The University of Iowa Faculty Senate voted 42 to 7 to pass a resolution calling on the university to hold the financial services provider TIAA accountable for its investments in global farmland.

Un nouveau rapport du Oakland Institute dénonce le financement par plusieurs fondations, fonds de pension et trusts internationaux d’une société de plantations de palmiers à huile en RDC

Australian farmland is an appealing asset class to Canadian-backed investment group, Warakirri Asset Management, with the firm having launched a new fund which expects to raise $500 million.

An unnamed European pension fund has become the cornerstone investor in the just-launched, close-ended Warakirri Farmland Fund, which aims to raise up to €320m in equity.

Report finds the Canadian based pension plan is not living up to its own environmental, social responsibility, and corporate governance principles, resulting in adverse impacts on Maui’s environment and residents.

The South African Government Employees Pension Fund and the country's Public Investment Corporation are invested in a Congolese palm oil business linked to past human rights abuses and land expropriation.

A first €20m has already been invested in olive orchards in Portugal, with possible investments in Danish organic vegetable farming, American potatoes, barley and wheat as well as kiwi fruit in New Zealand.

A new report by Chain Reaction Research presents data on specific actors linked to Cerrado deforestation in 2020, including the quantified risk exposure of the largest soy traders, meatpackers, and retailers.

«Ces investisseurs sont directement responsables des vols de terres et des violations des droits de l’homme perpétrés contre les communautés locales,» selon Frédéric Mousseau

Resolution adopted by the Professional Staff Congress, a union that represents 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York and the CUNY Research Foundation.

A new report from the Oakland Institute, reveals that several well-known pension funds, trusts and endowments are invested in a group of oil palm plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo accused of environmental and human rights abuses.

Resolution by Cornell's University Assembly also calls on its main pension fund supplier to divest from agribusiness companies associated with deforestation, indigenous rights violations, and severe climate impacts.

As community efforts to reclaim 100,000 hectares of their ancestral land are met with violent repression, unlawful arrests, and murder, a report unveils the names of the new investors financing the plantations in the DRC.

Alors que les efforts de la communauté pour récupérer 100 000 hectares de leurs terres ancestrales, initialement saisies il y a plus d'un siècle pour des plantations de palmiers à huile, sont confrontés à une répression violente, des arrestations illégales et des meurtres, un nouveau rapport de l'Oakland Institute dévoile les noms des investisseurs finançant les plantations en RDC.

Global commodities giant Cargill continues to buy soybeans from a farm in Brazil that cultivates on illegally acquired and deforested land, including lands acquired by US teachers’ pension fund TIAA.

The co-founder of Microsoft and his wife rank as the largest private farmland owners in the US, with over 242,000 acres across the country.

Brazil's land agency and a state court have determined that pension fund manager TIAA and Harvard University’s endowment fund illegally acquired hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmlands in Brazil’s ecologically sensitive Cerrado region.

A top US retirement fund and a major sugar producer have found themselves embroiled in a probe into possible breaches of land-purchase rules in agricultural superpower Brazil.