Foreign companies have recently started buying or leasing huge tracts of agricultural land in developing countries…A seminar in Zurich brought together development experts to put the issue into context and take a long term view…Ralf Leonhard of FIAN…described to the seminar the experience of a group of villagers in Kenya. …whose lands had been leased to a foreign company…their livelihoods had been undermined.…One problem is the asymmetry of international investment law, where investors enjoy a much higher level of protection than the indigenous people.…The traditional assumption has been that investment stimulates growth, whose benefits in the long run “trickle down” to the entire community. But it is now being recognised that this is not necessarily the case…[refers to Daewoo Logistics, Nestle]