The Global Land Grab: A Human Rights Approach seminar will analyze the global land grab through a human rights lens, assessing the trade and investment agreements that are enabling the trend, as well as its likely effects on small farmers, indigenous peoples and food sovereignty.

Rattled by last year's food price crisis, governments and corporations have signed a slew of deals to lease or buy arable land in cash-strapped nations, mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The Ernst & Young office in Addis is currently advising several investors from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, who are investing tens of millions of dollars in the agro industry in Ethiopia.

'Land Grab: The Race for the World's Farmland' is the title of the conference, focusing on the recent race to secure large areas of arable farmland around the world.

The International Food Policy Research Institute said 15 million to 20 million hectares of farmland in poor nations were sold since 2006, or were under negotiation for sale to foreign entities.

The Angolan government plans to invest $1 billion in 2009 in the farming sector and welcome in U.S. Chiquita Brands International Inc to its banana industry. Other foreign companies and countries, including China have also said they plan to invest millions of dollars in the war-shattered nation’s coffee, sugar, cassava and palm oil industries.

Although it slipped past the world’s media, in mid-April it emerged that Jarch Capital had doubled its landholdings in Southern Sudan. That takes the acreage owned by Phillippe Heilberg and chums to a massive 800,000 hectares, or 3,000 square miles, which the firm claims will become a gigantic agricultural plantation.

Von Braun says many details of the land deals are unknown because of a lack of transparency. But he estimates the amount of land and money involved. “It adds up to 15 to 20 million hectares currently under negotiation…. So it’s fairly large. How much money is involved? If we add up the deals negotiated and the investments planned, it adds up to $20 to $30 billion of investment,” he says.

These land acquisitions have the potential to inject much-needed investment into agriculture and rural areas in poor developing countries, but they also raise concerns about the impacts on poor local people, who risk losing access to and control over land on which they depend.

Egypt may start selling farmland in tenders to foreign and local investors by June as part of a new agro-industrial zones project, the head of the country's Industrial Development Authority said.

The Philippines has offered to become a major source of agricultural products to Saudi Arabia ahead of a planned visit by the kingdom’s agricultural minister Fahd Balghunaim, Arab News reported on Wednesday.

Less than two weeks ago, Daewooinformed the public through the press that it stopped its plans for large-scale plantation in Madagascar. However, it was only a diversion to keep the local press away.