Kuwait has provided US$350,000 to the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to study the suitability of extending irrigation so rice can be grown for export to Kuwait.

Local NGOs investigate the acquisition of land by Swiss company ADDAX in Sierra Leone.

"Personally, I believe that in five years or in ten years time I would like to be seen and compared with peers such as Cargill or the Archer Daniels of the world or the Bunges of the world."

This one-day multidisciplinary workshop will examine the scale of the problem and the environmental degradation, economic, social and health problems facing the Oromo people as the result of the farmland wholesale to foreign investors and will aim to formulate a consensus on how to mitigate its burden on the Oromo people.

World Bank and UN's seven Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment are "woefully inadequate" says UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

SilverStreet is scouting for commercial farms in five countries — Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

World Bank's MIGA provides political risk insurance for Chayton Capital's $50 million farmland investments in southern Africa.

These planned food estates will deprive Papuans of their traditional resources for hunting and fishing and destroy the very basis of their livelihoods.

With the emerging land investments a new set of challenges emerges for the woman farmer.

By 2008 global grain prices were reaching record levels, and Swedish, British, Chinese, and Korean investors were piling into Russian farmland.

Abu Dhabi is preparing to launch a large-scale agricultural project in Sudan to develop more than 70,000 acres of land as part of the oil-rich Gulf emirate's efforts to secure food supplies.

A lawyer advising the NZ Government how to make it easier to sell assets overseas is working for the Chinese company wanting to buy the Crafar farms, the Green Party says.