Neha sold off its farm in Pune and shifted operations to ethiopia where it has lands for floriculture and food grains.

Karuturi has an agreement to provide 40,000 tons of rice to neighboring Djibouti.

If what is going on in Gambella was happening in New Delhi, India; in Oxford, England; in Bismarck, North Dakota; in Saskatoon, Canada; this would be unthinkable.

Karuturi is perhaps the poster child for the big land grabs that have characterized large scale agricultural investment in Ethiopia

Farmland is a compelling way to capitalize on the coming bull market in agricultural commodities, but it’s a high-risk proposition.

“If we get money [from renting out our land] we can buy food anywhere. Then we can solve [Ethiopia's] food problem,” says Abera Deressa, minister of state for agriculture

“I got in on the ground floor, others got in on the second floor, but there’s a lot of floors left to go in Africa’s economic cycle,” says farmland investor Sai Karuturi.

MMTC, Iffco and Bharti are the latest to find the continent’s land and labour attractive for their agribusiness.

The Egyptian external agricultural land deals are all the more fragile as a future government or policy change in Ethiopia or Sudan risks destabilizing their external food security strategy.

Ramesh Krishnaswamy of Karuturi Global in an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18

Addis Abaaba has decided to withdraw from the regional governments the right of attributing leases of over 1,000 ha. However, the 2010 federal budget lists no income whatsoever, and no information on this subject appears in the quarterly reports of the National Bank of Ethiopia.

The two months we spent in the Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia, surveying smallholders and profiling large-scale commercial farms, left us with a different impression.

The EAC food security strategy advises partner states to “resist leasing or selling large chunks of land to foreign entities for food production or bio-fuels solely for export.”

The people of Ethiopia have a question for you and the government of Ethiopia you represent, “Why are you giving away our land to foreigners?”

Punjab-based farmers are set to acquire 50,000 ha of farm land on lease in Ethiopia for growing high-value cash crops, including pulses and maize, for export to India and Europe.

Tensions against Indian companies acquiring farmland in Ethiopia are mounting, according to Tehelka

The International Financial Corporation has actually increased the ability of foreign investors to acquire land in developing country markets by promoting profitable deals, creating “investment promotion agencies” and rewriting national laws., says Anuradha Mittal

There is too much at stake when governments give up land, water, and livestock to large-scale foreign investment. NGOs and funders have to listen and respond to the needs and accomplishments on the ground, and keep local food systems truly local.

Anywaa Survival Organisation would like to call upon indigenous people to resist this kind of land grabbing effort of the Ethiopian government, now acknowledged by a World Bank report

Hassad Food knows how to shop. The $1b subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund finalised a $500m agreement last year to grow wheat & rice on 100,000 ha in Sudan and has announced plans to invest $700m worldwide this year.

Studies suggest that a third of the land sold or acquired in Africa is intended for fuel crops - some 5 million hectares. Friends of the Earth has looked at cases of land grabbing in 11 countries across Africa, from Ethiopia to Mozambique

UNCTAD believes pension funds, with their apparent focus on reputation, accountability, and the long term, could set new best-practice standards as they join the farmland investment trend.

Gambela’s new tag as a land grabbing hub comes as BHO Agro Plc becomes the third Indian firm to begin operations in the region after two other Indian companies, Karuturi and Ruchi Group, moved into Gambela in 2008 and early 2010, respectively.

Since the food crisis of 2008, food justice activists have warned that governments in concert with multinational corporations have accelerated a worldwide "land grab" to buy up vast swaths of arable land in poor countries.

New study urges Kingdom to forge strategic alliances with global food giants to facilitate access to land or to final products.

It is not too late for equitable partnerships to flourish between foreign investors and local communities.

A four-part piece about the increasing prevalence of large-scale land acquisition or "land grabs" in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Worldwatch Intitute.

To speak only of the ‘threats and potential opportunities’ that these investments highlight leaves underexposed the grave risks to human rights that they pose, writes Dr. Margot Salomon, from the London School of Economics