The distinctive feature of these land deals that has attracted attention is the speed of the acquisitions, the transparency (lack thereof) of the terms and the scale of the acquisitions and implied investment.

The PRI for Farmland are supposed to an opportunity for communities and CSOs to assess the performance of investors in farmland against a set of voluntary standards, but fall short of what’s needed to hold companies properly to account.

The Chinese Government is seeking less scrutiny of its Australian farm raids. Sources say the Chinese are pushing the issue as part of a planned free trade agreement with Australia.

Trilogy Capital is involved in a large scale agriculture project in Ethiopia with US-based Morrell Agro Industries.

Herakles Farms plans to clear and replace 300 square miles of virgin rainforest with mono-culture trees to establish an oil palm plantation, with major impacts on 52,000 Indigenous peoples in 88 villages who depend on the forest.

Since 2009, Whitestone (SL) Limited has managed to obtain 13 leasehold titles covering a staggering 1.34 million acres of land in the Bombali and Koinadugu Districts of Northern Sierra Leone for large-scale agricultural development.

The Singapore-based trading house paid R$255m ($129m) to acquire the Usina Açucareira Passos (UAP) mill, in which it pledged to invest a further $111.5m in the next five years to boost both cane growing and producing capacity.

The agricultural arm of the $US487 billion Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association has snapped up six farming properties from listed company PrimeAg Australia in a deal worth $36.7 million.

Foreign investors have shown real interest towards Bulgarian agriculture for the past 2-3 years. The trend has changed a bit and now different Arab countries and China are the interested ones, instead of Italy, France, etc.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is launching a call for proposal for all interested researchers and academics in its Multinational Working Group on a theme titled: “Land grabs and food sovereignty in Africa”.

This is in relation to the land grabbing issue in the municipality of Opol in Misamis Oriental, Southern Philippines

Tanzania has been advised to reduce land lease agreement to investors to below 50 years from the current 99.