Retirement fund and financial services firm TIAA-CREF is helping to meet the growing institutional demand for sustainably managed farmland, which can deliver stable returns above inflation.

Hungary this week moved to ban foreign ownership of agricultural land under its new constitution amid fears over the future of family farming in the country.

Making credit easier to obtain for many farmers and possibly opening up agriculture to foreign investment are two of the latest moves designed to develop the sector in Algeria

Report from Indigenous Peoples Organization of Bian Enim

Nasako Besingi, director of environmental NGO Struggle to Economize the Future, says protests against a controversial palm oil plantation in the Korup National Park, southwest Cameroon will continue despite arrests and intimidation.

he Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has upheld a complaint lodged by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) against a rogue palm oil company and has ordered it to immediately stop clearing customary forests in Indonesian Borneo.

"Large scale agriculture investment requires a lot of transparency and legal certainty, and that is what is lacking most of the time," he says. "We have seen that large-scale investment coming - I'm not saying that it is wrong, but it should be very clearly covered by countries' legislation.

From next month (January 2013), Tanzania will start restricting the size of land that single large-scale foreign and local investors can "lease" for agricultural use.

The Farm Land Security Board of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has now hired an investigator with some "special skills" and experience to look into illegal farm sales to foreign investors.

The fund house aims to capitalise on Japanese pension plans' growing interest in new investment types, including Asian fixed income and certain alternatives like farmland

The controversy regarding India’s permission to allow foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail and growing “land grab” in Africa by multinational corporations are being closely watched globally by agriculture experts, researchers and donors.

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.