It is a mixed farm, with arable crops and a 40-strong herd of beef cattle.
"On a per capita basis, China has half the arable land and a third to a quarter of the water than the global average, " says Merritt Cluff of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
In Bedfordshire, a former arable farm in the open countryside received permission for a nursery and bulb sheds.
Soil contamination has long been an issue in China, were rapid industrialization and lax enforcement of environmental-protection laws have resulted in the pollution of large swathes of arable land with a variety of heavy metals.
Madagascar may be a surprising example as it witnessed what is perhaps the most notorious land grab of all: a South Korean company was offered half the country's arable land a proposal that fuelled protests which eventually toppled the government who approved the deal.
In Madagascar this year popular hostility to a deal that would have leased 1.3m hectares half the island's arable land to Daewoo Logistics, a South Korean company, fanned the flames of opposition and contributed to the president's overthrow.
It suspects Kenya of using the EAC as a way of grabbing arable Tanzanian land on the cheap.
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Biofuels -- Rising demand for food, which competes with biofuels for arable and pasture land, and a popular backlash against the subsidies they attract, will constrain the long-term potential for biofuels production using current technology.
"We're going through a very bad time in arable farming, but that is nothing compared to the hardship the sheep farmers are going through, " he said.
With a fifth of Japan's arable land, Hokkaido is the country's food basket.
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President Lula has rejected criticism from President Chavez and others that the use of ethanol as a biofuel would use up valuable arable land and increase food prices.
Expanding supply at the same rate will be difficult, because the amount of arable land under cultivation is growing by only a fraction of a percentage point each year.
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They have vast arable land for agriculture, large rainforests that play a crucial role in combating global warming, great biodiversity, abundant renewable energy resources, enormous reserves of fresh water and precious marine and coastal resources.
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He said the soil quality on the new site was not yet known but there had been a suggestion it had previously been used as arable land.
Authorities in Zhoukou in Henan province have started a controversial second tomb-removal campaign to free up more arable land and are warning villagers of legal reprisals if they refuse to level graves, The Beijing News reports.
And while the FAO admits that some developing countries will be able to expand their arable land by as much as 12 percent, the downside is that a "considerable part" of this extra farmland will be a direct result of deforestation.
Continuing wrangling has acted as a serious disincentive to further investment in the country's valuable arable land.
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China's demand for fertiliser is expected to be particularly buoyant as a result of its huge population and the poor quality of its arable land.
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The study had looked at a "very, very high" proportion of England's organic arable farms, he said.
As you pointed out, there is little arable land available and creating new croplands by continuing to destroy rainforests and fragile ecosystems is a cure worse than the disease.
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