UK

A new report by an alliance of civil society organisations chronicles one of the most scandalous failures of development bank investment in agriculture.

Un nouveau rapport d'une alliance d'organisations de la société civile dévoile l'un des échecs les plus scandaleux des investissements des banques de développement dans l'agriculture.

Norfund reports losses of over $23 million on its investments in the UK company Agrica and its large-scale rice plantation in the Kilombero Valley of Tanzania.

UK company Tate & Lyle has been accused of betraying 200 families in Cambodia who have fought for years to secure compensation for land they say was taken from them to make way for a sugar plantation.

A failed palm oil enterprise on disputed land in the Democratic Republic of Congo where there has been a record of human rights conflicts has blown more than $76 million of British aid.

Kenya's Murang'a county is home to Kakuzi, the food producer and exporter that occupies some 15,904 ha. Land ownership in this fertile area is out of reach for many who consider it their ancestral home.

Foreign ownership of farmland in some states has surged to as high as 25 per cent as China maintains its position as Australia's most powerful foreign investor.

Communities living within the concessions claimed by PHC have long sought to regain control over their lands and have called for negotiations to determine the conditions under which the company may be allowed to continue to operate.

European MPs issue an interparliamentary statement on the “Finance in common summit”, calling on public development banks to stop "harmful investments", such as those in the oil palm plantation company Feronia in the DR Congo.

The Sierra Leone Agriculture signed a 50-year lease for 41,582 hectares of land for the development of palm oil, displacing over 30,000 residents and farmers, mostly women, in the Northwest district of Sierra Leone

The sale includes just under 300,000 head of cattle, nine pastoral leases across the Northern Territory and Queensland totalling around 3.2 million hectares, and a 90 per cent stake in a feedlot business in Indonesia.

Seventy-nine Kenyans have launched a legal claim in the High Court in London against Camellia Plc (and other UK companies in the Camellia Group) for alleged human rights abuses at its Kenyan plantations.