Today's emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialised farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds, big banks and the like.

Key areas of investment interest from pension and sovereign wealth funds in UK, Middle East, Europe and the US include agriculture land in Australia, South and North America, and throughout Europe.

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.

Saudi Arabia announces the launch of Agroinvest, which will focus on farm acquisitions abroad to grow wheat, rice, soybeans and other crops in Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan and Turkey

Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, a Boston-based unit of Toronto's Manulife Financial Corp., decided its first Canadian purchase would be an 1,100-acre (450-hectare) patch of land that it called "one of the most highly productive properties in the industry." The company will not disclose how much it paid, or even the exact location of the farm. But president Jeff Conrad said the company is in Canada to stay, and the fund plans to seek more land.

The social consequences of these land grabs are significant.

Because of the political sensitivity of the modern-day land grab, it is often only the country's head of state who knows the details. Der Spiegel investigates.

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

Cru Investment Management PLC, a company based in Cardiff, UK, forecast a 30% return for an agricultural fund that generated profit from farms in Malawi.

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

Agriculture opportunities are accessed through land purchase (for production of foodstuffs or, more recently, biofuels), through equity investments in companies associated with this theme or – as is the case for £143m Ceres Agriculture fund – through pure derivative strategies.

"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.

As with timberland, while direct ownership and management (i.e., being a farmer), is a possibility, such a route is similarly fraught with difficulties. One of the most significant of these is the issue of diversification in the farmland itself - especially with a single investment. A well-diversified holding of farmland (row crop, permanent crop, pasture and even timber) will, therefore, not only require a significant investment, but may also involve land holdings in a number of different locations.

Gobal fund manager Schroders is launching an Agricultural Land Fund, only months after closing its USD 6 billion Alternative Solutions Agriculture Fund due to excessive investor demand.

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.