Chinese companies are buying up farmland all over the world, but a court in New Zealand, a country where agriculture is fundamental to the economy, has ruled against one such sale.

It vetoed the sale of dairy farms to a Chinese company because it was not of benefit to New Zealand.

Many New Zealanders worried that allowing large tracts of agricultural land to pass into foreign ownership would have set an economically fatal precedent.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas reports from Taupo in North Island.