The UPA Government has deprived job opportunities to millions of illiterate and semi-literate Indians by forcing Indian companies to invest abroad in overseas plantations and coal mining sectors.

Foreigners have an interest (partial or total ownership) in 1.6 percent of all privately held US agricultural land, a 1.4 million acre increase from 2007.

A significant percentage of the manual labour force on arable land in Pakistan is female. If we lease this land to Saudi Arabia -- a country where women are not allowed to drive cars, vote, work in public places with a namehram -- to do with as it pleases -- will there still, across the proposed acreage reportedly twice the size of Hong Kong, be room for them?

Last May, while Pakistan’s military was waging its offensive in Swat, Islamabad officials were simultaneously launching another offensive in the Gulf: a charm offensive to secure investment in Pakistani farmland.

Tanzania has offered to lease land to Indian private companies for a period of 99 years, as it pitched for increased investment in the agricultural sector.

The terms of farmland deals are hardly made public. Although a theoretical possibility exists in a few cases for some transfer of technology for agricultural development, risk also exists to peasant farmers who cannot compete with well-resourced commercial farms. Take, for instance, the case of barley and oilseeds producers in Ethiopia.

According to Steve Yuzpe, the CFO of Sprott Resource, ongoing population growth, dwindling arable land, water issues, even the falling yield productivity delivered by genetically modified seeds will be the big drivers for continued record demand—pushing food prices ever higher.

It's a tsunami of land deals and, as all of the experts who have studied the phenomenon have agreed, no nation is truly prepared for its implications.

As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that's what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe.

A recent jump in rich country land purchases in the developing world has caught the attention of analysts in trade and human rights circles.

The Caribbean is still struggling to develop a new agricultural model. While small scale agriculture and land ownership continues to have a deep rooted and emotional appeal, large scale farming with its echo of servitude–in the Anglophone Caribbean at least–remains far from attractive.

In 2006, Thailand had about 25 million farmers, who accounted for 40% of the population. The number is likely fall to 37% of the population by 2013. The government must act to reverse the trend, otherwise investors could rent or buy land from farmers to invest in large-scale farming, agricultural processing plants and hiring local people.

With Gulf countries and businesses demonstrating a newfound disposition for direct farm investment to cater for their local agro commodity needs, Sub-Saharan Africa has been identified as a source of growing and/or producing their imported food. Nigeria’s position in the matrix cannot be overemphasized.

“The food crisis in the spring of 2008 was a warning sign,” according to al-Obeid. Saudi Arabia is a net importer of agricultural products, especially rice, corn and soya. This fact is pushing the state to invest overseas. We’ve sent government and private-sector delegations to Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, Sudan, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan. These delegations have been very warmly received.”

AOAD Director-General Salim Allowzi said the private sector in the Arab World needs to step up investment in farming projects to cut the massive import bill, ensure enough farm products for the region and bolster food security.

For the practical realisation of the goal of food sovereignty that has been eluding our nation since the time of independence, the importance of genuine agrarian reform and peasants’ rights cannot be underestimated.

Land acquisitions abroad are the only viable response, Mohammed Raouf, program manager of environment research at the Gulf Research Center, and others say.

Some experts believe that the emphasis should be on overseas agricultural investments as well as a boost in trade relationships, due to the unavoidable handicaps to domestic agriculture.

Lured by soaring food prices, corporations - both domestic and foreign - have been snapping up land in this fertile region the size of France, replacing inefficient Soviet-style collective farming with modern farming techniques and economies of scale.

“Foreigners who come here get astonished at the gleaming black earth,” said Viktor Karnushin, head of a local subsidiary of Sweden’s Black Earth Farming corporation, one of the biggest foreign players in Russian farming.

GCC countries face growing constraints in agricultural capacity. Structural factors are exacerbating pressures on food prices. A new report from Standard Chartered supports additional investment in agriculture.

Three major multi-billion Shariah-based projects to boost infrastructure, agriculture and hospitality sectors in GCC and elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia were launched here yesterday.

A food mega-project planned for a vast area in the Papuan district of Merauke is causing concern that indigenous people's land will be taken and their livelihoods destroyed.

One issue reportedly delaying UAE investment in Pakistan is the Gulf state appearing to want “blanket exemption” from Islamabad’s agricultural export policies.

There is growing interest in agricultural land, which Bramdean Asset Management is looking at and believes has huge potential

The Rivers State Government has reiterated its resolve to create an enabling environment to enhance rice production and processing, as well as promote and protect other agricultural business interests in the state.

The Government is considering the purchase of farmland worth US$500 million (Dh1.8 billion) in Pakistan as part of a strategy to lower food import costs.

The Moroccan government has pursued a strategy of leasing state-farms previously under the management of Société de Développement Agricole (SODEA). A large number of bids were made by agricultural businesses from France, Egypt, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

A military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.

In 2006, Beijing and Maputo signed a memorandum of understanding concerning the creation of a massive agricultural project in the Zambezi river valley area.