Investment managers in the US report rising interest from pension schemes and retail investors in funds that buy and run farmland in developed countries.

Representatives of Saudi group Agro invest, a public-private agricultural investment company, are now in Brazil seeking partnerships for producing and exporting grain and poultry.

Farmers from La Via Campesina will be at meeting of the FAO Committee on World Food Security next week to demand concrete measures to tackle the problem of land-grabbing.

The rights and wrongs of global agricultural investment examined on Business Daily of the BBC

TIAA is among the largest institutional investors in agriculture, with investments in more than 400 farms in North America, South America, Australia, and Eastern Europe as part of its General Account.

Fallow land in Africa presents a fantastic opportunity for Turkish businesspeople involved in agriculture, a Ugandan member of a cotton delegation visiting western Turkey said Monday.

News of progress on the massive Merauke food estate in Papua indicates growing momentum behind Indonesia’s attempts to boost its agricultural output through promoting investment and harnessing technology.

The morality of the global land rush is finely balanced and even the World Bank appears deeply torn.

The EAC food security strategy advises partner states to “resist leasing or selling large chunks of land to foreign entities for food production or bio-fuels solely for export.”

Mr Verghese says that Olam sees "sustainable value" in investing in agriculture, including farmland, and that GM crops are an inevitable "must".

The anxiety expressed in some farming quarters and the daily media about Australian farms becoming dominated by foreign corporations and governments fails to recognise that the coming and going of overseas investors has always been part of rural property transactions.

SLC, whose crops cover 223,000 hectares, will sell a 49 percent slice of the new company, Land Co., to local or foreign investors that may include sovereign and pension funds