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.

Africa's untapped agriculture potential make it an ideal partner for resource-constrained Middle Eastern countries that seek to improve their food security, a new report from Standard Chartered Bank said.

"We support continued efforts to develop principles for investment in the agricultural sector undertaken by the World Bank, regional development banks, FAO, UNCTAD, and IFAD," say G8 heads of state.

Evidence suggests a marked disparity in the benefits received by those involved in and affected by these transnational land acquisitions, particularly for those originally dwelling on the land.

A tribe of hunter gatherers living in trees in the forests of Papua, near the planned Merauke food estate where Wilmar and other firms plan to get farmland, has been discovered officially for the first time.

SilverStreet is scouting for commercial farms in five countries — Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Vaughan-Smith and his team of seven professionals are scouting for commercial farms in five countries — Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia — where conditions are deemed to be the most favorable.

"Local businessmen make deals with foreign investors and convince tribal authorities in the area to give them land, but the water from the river is not just for people to take," says Water Affairs Under Secretary A. Nehemia who had not been informed about the farm.

Farms of foreign owners control more than 6 percent of the total Czech farmland area of 3.6 million hectares, weekly Euro says in its latest issue to be published on Monday, referring to data of the Czech Statistical Office

Saudi Arabian Agriculture Minister Fahd Bin Abdul-rahman Bin Sulaiman Balghunaim said at the summit that Saudi Arabia was planning to invest in Algeria's agriculture, like Egypt and Sudan.

GCC countries are doing the right thing by increasingly exploring investments in farmlands abroad, says Jasim Ali, Bahraini MP.

"Here’s what I’m sure of: these deals will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, creating clear winners who benefit while the losers are denied their livelihoods."

Korean investors are nervous about trusting African governments’ guarantees, and about complex and frequently arbitrary regulations.

The Cambodian government’s moves to allocate vast tracts of land to foreign and local companies are often done without consulting local villagers.

The Indonesian government's plan to develop a food estate in Papua has come in for heavy criticism for potentially marginalizing small farmers and threatening the environment.

"EAC Partner States should resist the leasing or selling of large chunks of land to foreign entities for production of food or bio-fuel feedstock solely for export, which will be disadvantageous to food security in the region" says the East African Legislative Assembly

While the proposed deal brings up ethical questions of exploitation, another concern is how it will impact earth changes and food security in the future.

This three years memorandum is not only setting a framework of cooperation but it includes some specific steps such as mutual beneficial arrangements in the agricultural sector (e.g. investment and provision of grain, development of a grain terminal)

The list of Indian companies that have purchased land in Africa is quite long and includes companies in businesses ranging from agriculture and horticulture to engineering and metals.

Militant farmers belonging to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) are completely disgusted by the failure of government to stop land and crop conversions.

There’s a whole school of economic thought that says that Collier is wrong, that big is not necessarily better in agriculture — and that the land deals therefore might be unwise not because they’re wrong but because they’re unprofitable.

Buenos Aires-based Cresud plans to acquire more land to add to the 484,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) it owns and the 90,410 hectares it leases in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia

Stephen Murphy, managing director of institutional fundraising, said the firm had eyed agriculture and infrastructure investments in Uganda.

Roots for Equity Director Dr Azra Sayeed demanded that the Pakistani government stop giving agricultural land on lease to foreign food companies, and rather that these lands should be given to local growers to overcome food crisis in the country.