Indigenous and civil society leaders from Indonesia, Peru, Colombia and Liberia gathered in London Wednesday to urge a boycott of firms that commit human rights violations and land seizures to cultivate palm oil.

Institutional investors want access to farmland in Latin America, but they want it through a Delaware entity that can leap all of the local financial logistics.

"Our main priority in the Far East is to provide the conditions for investment in agricultural and infrastructure spheres," says Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev, naming several regions near China's northeast.

The Government office which decides whether or not to allow foreigners to buy sensitive New Zealand land will receive a 25 per cent boost in staff and new enforcement powers.

Farm Foundation, NFP, along with USDA’s Economic Research Service and Bank of America Merrill Lynch host a workshop on the implications of non-farmer investor interest in agricultural resources.

A unit of China’s Shanghai Pengxin Group Co. bought a controlling stake in Brazil’s soybean trader and biodiesel maker Fiagril Ltda for $286 million, marking the first major Chinese acquisition of an agricultural company in Brazil.

The private farming company, Sewa Farm, will start rice farming between June and July this year in Turma Bum in Bonthe district on an initial 25,000 hectares.

The suitors led by Shanghai Pengxin Group will instead work on a new structure for the takeover of S. Kidman & Co., while sticking with the same price tag for the 117-year-old cattle company.

The government has given Ke-Hong Group 2,500 acres for a multi-billion shilling project involving rice farming, poultry, horticulture, and fish farming, according to agriculture minister Tress Bucyanayandi.

An Ethiopian court has handed down a nine-year jail sentence to a leading dissident from the restive region where the government has leased vast tracts of land to foreign investors.

Ministers approved the sale of a New Zealand farm to a Panamanian firm whose treasurer was also a director of a company that Portugal believed laundered money for former Brazilian and Portuguese national soccer coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.

The largest agricultural investment under the federal government's new significant investment visa (SIV) program has been made in the $174 million float candidate Mort & Co, which owns and operates Australia's biggest independent feedlot business.