New Zealand

"The UAE is looking not just at land [acquisitions] but developing the whole supply chain," says Nicholas Lodge, managing partner at Clarity, a consultancy that advises on investments in agricultural industries.

In New Zealand, an opposition party is demanding hard figures on how much farmland is owned by foreigners, but the government says it can't produce the figures.

The 16,000-hectare farm which Första AP-fonden bought in Australia in December was one of a clutch of purchases of farmland, worth some $100m, by the pension fund.

Governments in a number of countries are trying to address concerns about land grabbing by closing their borders to foreign investors. Are these restrictions effective? Not really, says GRAIN.

New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs says his country can be a logical partner for resource-rich Gulf countries as a producer of food in places like Africa, where experts say half of the potential agricultural land is under-utilised.

New Zealand's state pension fund is looking at buying overseas farmland amid growing demand for food in emerging markets, and it is also interested in assets offered by struggling European banks as well as catastrophe insurance.

Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board is looking to capitalise on favourable growing conditions and access to Asian markets having taken a 30 percent stake in the central North Island's Kaingaroa forestry estate.

New research indicates that foreign ownership of farmland and other rural real estate in New Zealand may be closer to 10%, significantly higher than a recent conflicting estimate of 1.5%.

The new Australian head of Singapore-listed agribusiness Olam International wants to build more partnerships with institutional investors to open up investment in the agricultural sector.

Foreigners own far more New Zealand farmland than officially estimated and could hold a tenth of our country's productive agricultural real estate, says Bill Rosenberg of the Council for Trade Unions.

The Chinese conglomerate that bought the Crafar Farms this year is not ruling out the possibility of buying more New Zealand dairy land to fuel its exports to China.

Since Jane Mendillo took over the endowment in July 2008, Harvard’s holdings of forests, farms and other natural resources in Brazil as well as in New Zealand and Romania have grown to about 10 percent of the portfolio -- more than $3 billion -- and she wants to add more.