According to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as at 31 December 2010, 89% of the nation's agricultural land was Australian owned.

China's investment in foreign agricultural projects is booming, according to statistics peddled by Chinese agricultural officials during "Belt and Road" summit held in Beijing.

New figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show more than 12 per cent of land used for agriculture in South Australia is owned by foreign interests.

Even though Peru is not a major player in the global palm oil market, according to some statistics, it is the country where this crop is expanding the fastest.

As much as 10% of Romanian farmland could be in the hands of multinational businesses, but there are no official statistics to establish the full extent of the corporate takeover.

Foreigners have an interest (partial or total ownership) in 1.6 percent of all privately held US agricultural land, a 1.4 million acre increase from 2007.

The estimate used by the Prime Minister John Key that less than 1 percent of New Zealand farmland is foreign-owned is far below the mark according to an analysis of Overseas Investment Office decisions carried out by CTU Economist, Bill Rosenberg.

India's Mahakaushal Sugar and Power Industries has acquired 12,000 ha, and more efforts are being made to acquire an additional 15,000 ha, along Lower Rufiji River basin in Utunge Ward, Tanzania.

Farmland ranked as the most attractive investment in a survey of 197 Czech and Slovak millionaires.

Australia's agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has defended the government’s newly tightened foreign investment regime before key agricultural industry stakeholders.

On the occasion of the publication of Transnational Corporations and Land Speculation in Brazil, Mary Taylor of LeftEast spoke with Fábio Pitta, Devlin Kuyek and Attila Szőcs about the broader implications of the report's findings.

In 2006, Beijing and Maputo signed a memorandum of understanding concerning the creation of a massive agricultural project in the Zambezi river valley area.

A military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.

Some experts believe that the emphasis should be on overseas agricultural investments as well as a boost in trade relationships, due to the unavoidable handicaps to domestic agriculture.

Land acquisitions abroad are the only viable response, Mohammed Raouf, program manager of environment research at the Gulf Research Center, and others say.

A recent jump in rich country land purchases in the developing world has caught the attention of analysts in trade and human rights circles.

The terms of farmland deals are hardly made public. Although a theoretical possibility exists in a few cases for some transfer of technology for agricultural development, risk also exists to peasant farmers who cannot compete with well-resourced commercial farms. Take, for instance, the case of barley and oilseeds producers in Ethiopia.

The Moroccan government has pursued a strategy of leasing state-farms previously under the management of Société de Développement Agricole (SODEA). A large number of bids were made by agricultural businesses from France, Egypt, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabian Agriculture Minister Fahd Bin Abdul-rahman Bin Sulaiman Balghunaim said at the summit that Saudi Arabia was planning to invest in Algeria's agriculture, like Egypt and Sudan.

"We support continued efforts to develop principles for investment in the agricultural sector undertaken by the World Bank, regional development banks, FAO, UNCTAD, and IFAD," say G8 heads of state.

Africa's untapped agriculture potential make it an ideal partner for resource-constrained Middle Eastern countries that seek to improve their food security, a new report from Standard Chartered Bank said.

Egypt will soon offer to lease, for 49 years, 50,000 feddans [21,000 ha] for agri-business projects in North Sinai, the irrigation minister said -- but only to domestic investors.

Government has taken action to resolve lingering speculation and strengthen transparency surrounding the degree of foreign ownership in Australian agriculture.

The UAE has purchased thousands of acres of arable land in Sudan to grow products for the home market, while Bahraini investors help meet demand in the kingdom from farmland bought in Thailand and the Philippines.

Richer countries that are investing in land abroad for food cultivation should also educate the poor about agricultural methods, so that food production can be increased to a level at which poor people can produce enough for investing countries as well as themselves, says Bob Geldof.

Rural MPs, especially those from NSW and Queensland, have been fielding increasing complaints from constituents in recent months about the level of foreign ownership of Australian farms and agricultural businesses.

The National Farmers Federation says the figures that show Australian farm land to be about 90 per cent locally owned is a small part of the picture. It's just one of three studies, with the others looking into the value of farm production.

Foreigners currently have more than 700,000 ha of agricultural land in Romania, representing 8.5 percent of the arable land of the country, says Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

No evidence to support the idea that “China” was intending to create an agricultural colony in Mozambique, or make the Zambezi Valley into China’s rice bowl.

In an effort to improve food security, the government has been investing in agriculture projects abroad, especially in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Pakistan, Romania, Sudan and the Americas, to secure food supplies and safeguard against market fluctuations.