New Zealand

Mr Rosslenbroich is particularly enthusiastic about agriculture, where he says Aquila has “teams travelling the world looking for farms”, with New Zealand dairy farms a speciality.

Southern NZ farmers will want to see cash before agreeing to sell their farms to a foreign company again, having been burnt once by a deal that turned sour.

Someone needs to put Fonterra and the Feds into the same room.

The Chinese-backed company seeking to buy 29 North Island dairy farms is also trying to buy up to 100 farms in Otago and Southland and build a dairy factory in Southland.

There is serious overseas interest in acquiring New Zealand farmland, and some confusion in the rules and regulations surrounding the process.

The economic nationalism and calls for protectionism seem ironic given the fact that Fonterra itself is a large multinational, which in addition to having farms in China, has since 2002 been in partnership with global food giant Nestle in the Dairy Partners Americas.

Southern Pastures, registered in Auckland, is seeking $500 million from local and offshore investors to initially buy outright, or controlling shares in, farming concerns throughout the southern hemisphere, but with a bias towards New Zealand.

The most unbelievably naïve reaction to the news that a mysterious Chinese company is hoping to buy up to $1.5 billion worth of dairy farms came from Federated Farmers, which said that this is an “unintended consequence” of the NZ/China Free Trade Agreemen

"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

The China Jin Hui Mining Corporation - recently renamed Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings - says it has agreed to buy the Crafar family farms as well as other assets including farmland, cattle, and milkpowder production plant.

An ambitious project pooling New Zealand's farming expertise has received a fillip from Emirates Investment Group. Through EIG, there are two large Pakistan projects on the cards, one involving a 35,000ha farm.

Chris Kelly, chief executive of the country's largest corporate farmer, Landcorp, says he knows of other initiatives being explored and believes there will be more foreign investors knocking at New Zealand agriculture's door.