While ordinary Canadians watch their pensions and jobs evaporate in the global economic mess, those who brought us the crisis have found a new profit-making toy. It’s land-grabbing, 21st-century style. Canada is not being spared.

Trade minister Stockwell Day said that Canada stands to benefit from the Saudi Kingdom’s overseas agricultural investment initiative and that the Canadian Parliament is studying it.

Environmentalists — who have dubbed it the “land-grabbers bill” — fear the new rules will offer a carte blanche for those wanting to make money by destroying the Amazon.

When people are using lands under customary tenure arrangements, there is an inequality in bargaining power where no formal titles to the land exist if a foreign investor is interested in purchasing the land.

Together with GMO, the land grab wave that is spreading across Africa and other countries in the "developing world" should be brought to the attention of all interested Ghanaians. It is important for Ghanaians to avoid falling for it.

The Leopard Cambodia Fund has set aside $1.8m to establish Cambodia Plantations, a Singapore-based company which will serve as an offshore finance vehicle for agricultural investments in central Cambodia. The drawdown will fund the establishment of a subsidiary that is in the process of obtaining a land concession in the province of Kompong Chhnang for rice cultivation.

I wonder why the people (and more importantly the political leaders and elite) of the African and Latin American countries are not opposing and driving these companies out from within their national borders. The reason is simple. The rich and elite of every country is the real beneficiary of the process of globalisation.

Latin America is surely one of the most attractive places for China to invest in arable land and food industries.

Soros recently became the largest shareholder in Adecoagro one of the leading agribusiness companies in South America whose main activities are the production of grains, rice, oilseed, dairy products, sugar, ethanol, coffee, cotton and cattle meat.

Paper presented at the Expert Meeting on “How to Feed the World in 2050,” FAO, Rome 24-26 June 2009

Greg Mason, from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, says countries and regions facing 'peak water' like China, India and the Arab states are looking to solve food shortages by growing crops in places like the Ukraine and Australia.

Carl Atkin, Head of Research at Bidwells Agribusiness looks at the recent interest in 'strategic food security' and the associated 'land grab' by Middle Eastern Corporations and Governments in countries as diverse of Sudan, Senegal and Sierra Leone.