Recent years have seen renewed private and public sector interest in developing country agriculture. A new wave of large-scale acquisitions of farmland has taken place for plantation agriculture in Africa, Asia and Latin America, fuelled by changing agricultural commodity prices, expectations of rising land values and public policies to promote long-term food and energy security. Despite emerging evidence on certain features of these land deals, uncertainty still surrounds the actors, relations, processes and incentives involved. What is increasingly clear is that, rather than a transaction between a provider and an acquirer of land, each deal may in fact involve a complex web of multiple parties.