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.

New report reveals finance firm TIAA initiated unprecedented global farmland investments under CEO Roger Ferguson Jr., while undermining human rights standards.

The fund’s initial offering has raised EUR32.45 million to-date from private investors to back sustainably-managed agricultural land and forests in the Baltic Sea region and Central and Eastern Europe.

University of Iowa faculty members write that major collegiate employee retirement savings manager must divest from socially irresponsible farming pension fund investments and be transparent in doing so.

Sahel Capital’s portfolio companies in Africa have cumulative 16,000 hectares of commercial farmland and aggregate additional crop from over 9,000 smallholder farmers.

Zimbabwe's National Social Security Authority says it will begin to shift some of its investments to agriculture value chains such as maize, wheat, soya and export crops such as macadamia and blue berries.

American pension fund giant TIAA sold its Southern Riverina farming aggregation between Wagga Wagga and Albury in southern NSW to local Australian farmers after more than a decade of ownership.

An Associated Press investigation found poor conditions of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia across palm oil plantation in Malaysia and Indonesia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape.

This investment marks the US pension’s first investment in farmland, and in its first in Homestead.

The pension fund is reducing its allocation to real assets from 22% to 17% as it moves its agriculture allocation to zero.

The Covid-19 pandemic and a general trend towards ESG investing are pushing more institutional investors, particularly pension funds, to look more closely at farmland investments.

Two Harvard-controlled LLCs have deeded over 7,104.74 acres of land in northern San Luis Obispo County, California for an estimated $120.14 million (based upon $132,159 paid in county real estate transfer taxes.)