Family that sold Australia's biggest water licence in history has been selling its NSW farming operations and is setting up a new agricultural empire in the Blue Nile state in Sudan

Report looks at why it is vital to transform the secretive culture behind large scale land deals and sets out in detail what tools governments, companies and citizens can harness to ensure that this happens.

More than a quarter of all the meat produced worldwide is now eaten in China, and the country’s 1.35 billion people are hungry for more. In 1978, China’s meat consumption of 8 million tons was one third the U.S. consumption of 24 million tons. But by 1992, China had overtaken the United States as the world’s leading meat consumer—-and it has not looked back since. Now China’s annual meat consumption of 71 million tons is more than double that in the United States. With U.S. meat consumption falling and China’s consumption still rising, the trajectories of these two countries are determining the shape of agriculture around the planet.

The World Bank continues to facilitate land-grabbing in poor and developing countries around the world, according to new research released on Monday.

Food shortages and rural deprivation exacerbated by World Bank policy, says NGO ahead of land and poverty conference

Leading environmental campaigning organisation Friends of the Earth International and La Via Campesina have released two videos showing how projects financed by World Bank funds have allegedly led to African land grabs.

Plus other recent publications on land grabbing from IIED

"During my research trips in Africa, I came across posters against the land grab deals," Liberti told IPS. "One said: ‘Future generations will damn your graves, because you did not leave them any land.’"

World Bank officials say they will further support the county in the development of staple crop processing zones, while a US company indicates interest in 25,000 ha rice project in Rima irrigation scheme, Sokoto.

While Africa may have celebrated the demise of colonialism, it seems the continent is sliding back to those days, as investors continue to push murky land deals.

Responding to strong demand, asset management firm Land Commodities has plans to launch its first retail farmland fund. The company says it receives around 10 to 20 enquiries from private investors each week.

The decision to approve the sale of NZ dairy farms to a Chinese company has prompted an "Aotearoa is Not for Sale" hikoi, which starts at dawn tomorrow with prayers at Cape Reinga.