Sous l’œil bienveillant de l’ONU, les grands noms de la finance s’accaparent des régions agricoles entières.

Agribusiness and global investors are scooping up farmland. Are corporate farmers the new colonialists? asks BusinessWeek

The fervour with which foreign commercial interests are forcing their agricultural 'solutions' on the African continent represents nothing more than an established endeavour to protect profits and access to resources.

Perhaps the UN’s hand-wringing is just sentimental. Deals will be done and the rush to buy land has begun in Europe, too.

"We are seeing a land grab bigger than anywhere else in the world, and it has attracted a mighty cast of characters," says Kingsmill Bond, chief strategist at Troika Dialog, a Moscow brokerage firm.

A British entrepreneur is leasing land from smallholders in an attempt to revive the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union

Landkom has leased 165,000 acres from thousands of landowners in Ukraine and will reap its first big harvest this year.