When the new Land Reform Minister rummaged through his office in Madagascar's capital, he was shocked to discover the documents for a $2-billion deal to lease huge tracts of farmland to an Indian entrepreneur.

Millions of hectares of land in Africa, Asia and Latin America find their way into the hands of large-scale foreign investors each year. The victims of "land grabbing" are local villagers and farmers.

China’s growing agribusinesses and demand for soybeans and meat is bringing intensive farming and the risk of further deforestation in Brazil and beyond. Tom Levitt reports.

Principles for responsible agriculture investment are stock templates, designed to deflect the fallout from a growing number of media reports of land deals between investors and governments.

Hundreds of civil society organisations including farmers' movements, women's groups and non-governmental organisations, will launch a global appeal against farmland grabbing during the G20 meeting on Agriculture in Paris on June 22 and 23.

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.

The digitalisation of information on land and natural resources is exacerbating land grabbing in the remaining agricultural frontiers of Latin America.

The Land Policy Initiative will host a workshop on 30 September to evaluate recommendations arising from a study by Dalberg Global Development Advisors, which has developed a high level strategy and business plan; as well as an M&E framework to guide the implementation of the African Union declaration on land.

Ethiopian President Girma Woldegiorgis and the country’s environmental regulator have both written to the Agriculture Ministry expressing concern over the sale of forestry land to foreign agricultural companies.

It is unfortunate that even as deals that involve land which should belong to the people of Pakistan are struck, there has been so little public debate about the plan. We need to be informed of what is planned. Protests need too to be mobilized. In the prevailing political environment of Pakistan, the people who stand to lose the most have almost no spokesmen.

If the moratorium on agricultural land sale is lifted, rich multinational corporations will buy and it will be legislatively impossible to strip them of lands that could be used for feeding Ukrainians.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said corporate executives representing the big agricultural businesses in Saudi Arabia have raised concerns about the Philippine agrarian reform and limiting foreign land ownership as they indicated interest in acquiring tracts of plantation land and poultry farms.

Goverment of Ethiopia webpage on land lease contracts (in Amharic)

Profit maximization for multinationals like Karuturi is bolstered by the fact that borrowing locally is highly profitable.

The following is a statement from the Oromo Studies Association (OSA).

The Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development recently released the Land Rent Contractual Agreements for land leases between the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and twenty-four companies or individuals.

California think tank issues double-barreled report alleging Washington, London are willfully ignoring gross violations.

All this talk about people being displaced for the purpose of land lease is unfounded at best and even deliberately contrived at worst, says Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Ethiopia in New Delhi

Ginbot 7 unequivocally believes that Ethiopian sovereignty trumps contractual obligations.

The Indian construction company has decided to cultivate pongamia pinnata and edible oil seeds there

While Ethiopian and foreign companies such as Karuturi Global and Saudi Star have been given large leases and credit to farm lands in Gambella, local people have largely been left out, just as they have been excluded for decades

“We have finalised deals with four big agro companies in India for joint ventures for different crops that we are looking at growing – rice, maize, oil palm and sugarcane,” says Karuturi.

SMNE independent commentary on report regarding political impact and recommendations.

Numerous ethnic women living inside Ethiopia today are attempting to work toward peace in the northern and southern regions of Ethiopia as they continue to witness the destructive crackdown of the government against rural farming communities.

Ethiopian authorities should drop charges and release three local activists charged under repressive anti-terrorism law after trying to attend a workshop on food security, say six international organisations.

The executive supervising MIDROC's Ethiopian agriculture projects talks to The Africa Report about how rocketing consumption has been an opportunity for the company.

Land grabs in the developing world create a system so unequal that resource-rich countries become resource dependent.

Mr. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, will make scheduled appearances at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, January 27

There can be no denying that the Kuraz sugar plantation project has so far failed on its “development promises” made to the indigenous local communities.