Foreign investors acquired at least 1.6 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in 2016, the largest increase in more than a decade, according to a review by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting of the latest available federal data.

Alongside sustained demand for agricultural farms, game, stud, guest and lifestyle farms are gaining in popularity and have become a big driver of demand for country property, according to Ian Badenhorst, managing director of Seeff Country and Karoo.

One per cent of the world’s farms operate 70% of crop fields, ranches and orchards, according to a report that highlights the impact of land inequality on the climate and nature crises.

While farmland has long been considered a safe-haven investment, the Covid-19 pandemic and a general trend towards environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing are pushing more institutional investors, particularly pension funds, to look more closely at this alternative asset class.

Late last year, Eric O’Keefe was researching a mysterious recent purchase of 14,500 acres of prime Washington state farmland. His magazine, The Land Report, tracks major land transactions and produces an annual list of the 100 biggest US landowners.

The rehabilitation of South Africa’s closed coal mines has long been a source of contention among miners, environmental activists and affected communities.

Here’s the basic problem for conservation at a global level: food production, biodiversity and carbon storage in ecosystems are competing for the same land.

What would the world look like if we could decide – globally and collectively – to allocate all our land in the optimal way? Where would we grow food and find water, and what areas would we leave to nature?

Bioplastics marketed as “biodegradable” are remaining in soils and ditches for longer than the two-year industry standard, a scientific study by Wageningen University in the Netherlands has found.
The study was commissioned by Dutch environmental charity Plastic Soup Foundation and conducted by researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

The government has bought nearly four million hectares of farmland and spent at least R58-billion to compensate or restore ownership to black communities dispossessed of their ancestral property during colonisation.

Our planet makes food from light: it’s the origin of almost everything we eat. But what if we turned that on its head? What if, in the future, we could grow crops in complete darkness, packing them into tall warehouses, and releasing vast areas of agricultural land back to the wild?