Government-backed companies, as Hassad Food, have begun buying up farmland around the world, with Australia’s vast tracts of top quality primary production land a prime target.

Southeast Asian palm oil firms like Malaysia's Sime Darby and Singapore's Golden Agri Resources are backpacking to Africa, in what could be the planet’s next trend-setter in inter-continental resource trade.

Rural MPs, especially those from NSW and Queensland, have been fielding increasing complaints from constituents in recent months about the level of foreign ownership of Australian farms and agricultural businesses.

Richer countries that are investing in land abroad for food cultivation should also educate the poor about agricultural methods, so that food production can be increased to a level at which poor people can produce enough for investing countries as well as themselves, says Bob Geldof.

The UAE has purchased thousands of acres of arable land in Sudan to grow products for the home market, while Bahraini investors help meet demand in the kingdom from farmland bought in Thailand and the Philippines.

The Australian Parliament has moved to quell some of the anxieties surrounding a perceived foreign buy-up of local land, last week passing a motion regarding foreign ownership of agricultural land and agribusiness.

Foreign ownership of Australian land and agribusiness will soon be monitored.

President Jose Mujica said that private land sales will be honoured but under no conditions will sovereign funds or foreign countries be allowed to purchase land in Uruguay as is happening in Africa.

World food security fears may be driving the foreign rush to buy Australian farmland and agribusinesses, says Nationals' leader, Warren Truss.

The Republic of Congo has handed over 80,000 ha of arable land to a company owned and operated by 14 South African farmers.

Parliament is calling on the Productivity Commission to review the recent surge in foreign investment in farming, focusing on its effects on the economy and food security.

Investors are buying Canadian agricultural land, betting that rising food prices, a ballooning global population and growing worldwide scarcities in farmland will mean a payoff for them.

David Murrin, CIO at Emergent Asset Management, stresses the difficulties of jumping aboard the African growth story. "It is very hard to take advantage of the tremendous growth in African agriculture and that's why private equity investment is so important, it helps capture some of that growth," he says.

Foreign investment in Australia's food chain is increasing at a rate that is causing concern, and not just for people on the land.

In Ethiopia, resentments over land grab have already started claiming lives. The TPLF regime has already killed 10 protesting ethnic Anuak farmers and has sent thousands more to concentration camps.

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

The seizing of the poor farmers' land is destroying their only hope of survival on earth.

Bangladeshi authorities have started exploring new options to ensure the country's food security such as taking lease of vast areas of fallow agricultural land in the neighbouring Myanmar and in some African states.

Gulf nations need to step up investments in African and South East Asian farmland if the region is to play its part in averting a global food crisis, agriculture experts say.

Government has taken action to resolve lingering speculation and strengthen transparency surrounding the degree of foreign ownership in Australian agriculture.

Australia's center-left Labor government said Tuesday it will examine foreign ownership of the country's rural land and agricultural food production in response to a spate of takeovers that have triggered anxiety about job losses and broader concerns about food security.

Recent business delegations from Iran and Qatar expressed strong interest in buying farmland in Uruguay to develop their own production projects.

India and Mauritius have resumed discussions over a proposal to hand over the twin islands of Agalega to India for tourism development and possibly agriculture.

African governments should avoid rushing into big land lease deals with foreign investors or risk deepening poverty and ramping up social tensions, an official at the UN's Food and Agriculture Office said

The anxiety expressed in some farming quarters and the daily media about Australian farms becoming dominated by foreign corporations and governments fails to recognise that the coming and going of overseas investors has always been part of rural property transactions.

Wary of fluctuations on Wall Street, more wealthy Americans, private funds and foreigners are putting money into parcels of cornfields, fruit orchards and other US agricultural products.

Egypt will soon offer to lease, for 49 years, 50,000 feddans [21,000 ha] for agri-business projects in North Sinai, the irrigation minister said -- but only to domestic investors.

In Cambodia, an assessment of the impact of foreign farmland acquisitions has been hampered by a lack of data, including the total number of concessions awarded and an accurate set of GPS coordinates for each concession, the World Bank says.

Brazil shocked foreign investors when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was concerned about Brazilian land falling into foreign hands.

ASSOCHAM, India's apex industry body, has sent a proposal to the external affairs ministry offering to act as facilitator to help Indian farmers get farmland in Africa.