Competition is growing between Australia's major rural land selling agents as major institutional and private investors seek to gain a foothold in the growth area of agriculture.

"There will be concerns about agriculture investment unless land ownership is opened to foreign investors,' says the OECD's Jan Rielander.

Two villages, Sanamadougou and Sahou, in Mali, have been fighting for the past five years against eviction from their land by the large-scale investor Modibo Keita.

Many Punjab farmers who went to Africa and Georgia in search of greener pastures are returning home

Mitr Phol Group, Asia's biggest sugar producer, has earmarked 3.5 billion baht to double production in Laos, fed by a plantation area in the southern province of Savannakhet.

Gupta family, one of the most powerful business dynasties in India alongside that of Lakshmi Mittal, bought two farms with a total of 2,500 hectares of land in Teleorman.

While Wilmar spins green rhetoric, its bulldozers are still destroying vast swathes of forest and farmland.

Foreigners mostly seek agricultural land and land for tourism developments, but all foreigner-owned land in Africa holds the potential to prompt violence from displaced people.

Kuwait's Al-Badel International Development Company said it will launch a US$1.5 billion project to grow sugar cane in southern Mozambican province of Gaza within the next three months.

Brookfield Asset Management Inc., Canada’s largest alternative asset manager, has raised $300 million for a new agricultural fund targeting Brazilian farmland, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

About 100 ethnic Bunong protested outside the local office of French-owned rubber firm Socfin KCD in Cambodia yesterday, threatening to cut down its rubber trees if their ancestral lands were not returned.

While Wilmar spins green rhetoric, its bulldozers are still destroying vast swathes of forest and farmland.