A New York company managing the retirement savings of workers in Sweden, the US and Canada is evading Brazilian laws on foreign investment to acquire farmlands from a businessman accused of violently displacing local communities.

Land grabs and the speculation in land acquisitions are a growing reality globally. These trends were the focus of a one-day conference near Montreal yesterday looking into the evolution and effect on farmers in the province of Quebec.

A small and poor village in Romania has become the focus of a story involving land grabbing by foreign-owned multinationals and mafia-style corruption.

Global agricultural investor the Westchester Group, owned by pension fund manager TIAA-CREF, is on the hunt to buy farms in New Zealand, after focusing its investment attention for the past 25 years on agriculture in the US, Australia and Brazil.

Pension fund manager TIAA-CREF's farmland assets grew by 56% to $7.8 billion in committed assets.

Debt-burdened Glencore has entered early discussions with a number of sovereign wealth funds and commodities traders as it moves to offload the more than 30,000ha of cropping land across NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

George Soros participates in $500 million capitalisation of new firm, Tunbridge Partners, that will invest in "real assets" in timber and agriculture.

Uruguayan farm operators are raising a record amount of funds in the securities market after a boom in prices for the country’s farmland.

Investors have turned to farmland as part of a sweeping push into physical assets — everything from lumber, hotels and apartments to parking meters, bridges and highways.

Private equity and venture capital firms are going down to the farm, moving into the agribusiness and agriculture technology sectors in a big way.

Last year trustees added a global farmland fund managed by Insight Investment Management to the Kingfisher pension scheme.

Map Of Agriculture says it is well positioned to serve the comparative farming system benchmarking needs of farmland investors.

First State Super follows US and Canadian super funds with major investment in Australian almond plantations.

A substantial payout could be in store for private equity firms willing to take on the risk and plough capital into the farming business.

Norway’s central bank is divesting the country’s $870 billion pension fund of its holdings in four Asian multinationals for palm oil in Southeast Asia. POSCO and Daewoo were excluded for the activities in Merauke, Indonesia’s Papua province.

The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board has bought Macquarie Group's owned and operated almond properties in the Sunraysia district of north-west Victoria for more than $115 million.

Chinese company's takeover of Australian farmland and firms draws mixed reaction from Australia ministers.

TIAA-CREF has closed its second global agriculture fund, TIAA-CREF Global Agriculture II, on $3 billion, exceeding its $2.5 billion target. The fund had raised $1.7 billion by mid-June.

Sweden’s AP2 and UK local authority funds are among the backers of a new $3bn global agriculture fund.

New TIAA-CREF fund will invest in “high quality farmland assets” across North America, South America, Australia and parts of Europe with a focus on major grain exporting regions.

TIAA-CREF is expected to announce Tuesday that it has raised $3 billion for its second global farmland-investment partnership, exceeding its initial target of $2.5 billion.

The sliding dollar is sweetening Australia's appeal as an agricultural investment destination ripe for overseas companies and fund managers, particularly from North America and Europe.

Some estimates now bring the total of Ukrainian farmland controlled by foreign companies to over 2.2 million ha.

One of Canada's largest pension funds, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, has made its first rural land purchase in Australia through central Queensland's Hewitt Cattle Company.

Giant US investment fund TIAA-CREF expects Australia's ageing farmers and a lack of sons and daughters willing to inherit their farms will lead to large numbers of properties hitting the market over the coming decade.

Saskatchewan’s move to freeze purchases of farmland by pension plans and foreign investors has ignited a debate over what’s best for the future of Canada’s bread basket.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board says it is concerned about the Saskatchewan government's decision to temporarily ban certain institutional investors from buying farmland in the province.

New Zealand dairy giant will launch a fund that will pool capital from investors such as sovereign wealth funds and pension funds to invest in land and fixtures of dairy farms through a farm-owning entity.

DanChurchAid, CARE Denmark and MS calls for more transparency of pension investments in African agriculture.

Farmland deserves special attention because it involves much more than just land: the people who own and work the land form the basis of rural communities.