New Mexico State Investment Council will consider approving investment policies for a farmland suballocation, potentially in emerging markets, in its 10% long-term real asset portfolio.

SLC Agricola, the Brazil farm operator with large ambitions in farmland acquisition, sealed a $239m cash injection from UK fund manager Valiance Asset Management for a business aimed at turning scrub into "high-quality" farms.

China would invest billions of dollars to transform vast tracts of undeveloped land in northern Australia for farming, under a plan confirmed yesterday by the federal government.

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.