An Associated Press investigation found poor conditions of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia across palm oil plantation in Malaysia and Indonesia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape.

With fires on their Cerrado properties, Harvard’s and TIAA’s deforestation exposure appears to be growing.

With very low interest rates having taken root across asset classes and investors abiding in their hunt for higher yields, the world’s largest manager of global farmland, Nuveen, says the season may be ripe for a strategic allocation to the $2.3 trillion market for U.S. farm real estate.

GRAIN recently learned that several cases of land grabbing have been prosecuted in the courts, or been acted upon by national authorities, and so we have compiled a short update on these developments.

Protesters paid a visit to TIAA’s New York headquarters Thursday, urging the firm to stop investing in farmland and companies with ties to palm oil.

Milltrust has a 10 year, billion dollar program to establish farms in the southern hemisphere to produce rice, wheat, corn and barley, as well as new cash crops that will provide feedstock for animals.

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.

Let us focus on the real issue that our legislators should be grasping: how do we keep farmers operating and attract farmers to own the land they work, and not become peasants on land rented from institutional investors, domestic or foreign.

MetLife Inc, the largest US life insurer, started a business to make agricultural loans in Brazil as insurers expand in developing markets and seek investments to boost income with interest rates near record lows.

Since Jane Mendillo took over the endowment in July 2008, Harvard’s holdings of forests, farms and other natural resources in Brazil as well as in New Zealand and Romania have grown to about 10 percent of the portfolio -- more than $3 billion -- and she wants to add more.

Joe Azelby, JP Morgan’s head of Global Real Assets, is seeing a structural shift in many institutional portfolios toward real assets, including farmland.

"During my research trips in Africa, I came across posters against the land grab deals," Liberti told IPS. "One said: ‘Future generations will damn your graves, because you did not leave them any land.’"

Corporate agriculture is not about food production or satisfying the needs of the undernourished or downright starving but about producing profit. How long can it be before its limits are reached?

As controversy continues to bubble in Australia over the latest big local farmland buy-up and what it means for food production, it’s worth looking to see where these foreign raiders are coming from, who’s backing them and how other countries are tightening their regulations to stop them.

Protestors have been demonstrating in Geneva against the growth in investments in agriculture that they say endangers food security in many developing countries.

En Amérique latine, comme partout ailleurs dans le monde, les communautés subissent actuellement une nouvelle forme d’invasion de leur territoire.

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

Right now communities in Latin America, as around the world, are suffering a new kind of invasion of their territories

In the Philippines, a land lease hotspot like Cambodia or Laos, a series of high-profile deals has clashed with long-running demands for agrarian reform including land redistribution.

A group of private Saudi investors said they plan to start a company with $533.3 million capital that will invest in farm projects mainly abroad. First projects may be with Ghana, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

One of the country's biggest agricultural landholders is set to hit the auction block after Macquarie Asset Management told investors it would take its Paraway Pastoral Company to market after 17 years of ownership.

One year into the war, a new report reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.

With favourable global economic conditions, including current high commodity prices, and with Australia’s exchange rate at sub USD 0.70, big properties around Australia are changing hands with overseas investors buying in.

Auditors wrote down the value of Harvard's Brazil farm project by about $200 million after the endowment decided to exit the development in 2017, according to documents filed in a lawsuit.

Montreal-based Fiera Capital Corp. is taking the next step in its aggressive expansion plans that include adding agriculture and private equity to its current asset class offerings.

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

Foreign investors own 10% of Australia's agricultural land. But that could soon rise thanks to two huge projects being developed in Northern Territory's Top End with the help of foreign investors.

Right now, on the desks of Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) there is the background material for an application of credit guarantee for an 8000 ha sugar plantation and a refinery in Bagamoyo, Tanzania.

Finding suitable farmland investment vehicles is not as easy as one might think.

The social consequences of these land grabs are significant.