Farmland draws increased interest from investors

  •  Tags: US
Wallaces Farmer | 21 October 2011
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by Rod Swoboda

A number of topics related to world food production and increased demand for food by a growing world population were discussed at the annual World Food Prize symposium last week in Des Moines. Over 1,200 people with an interest in food and agriculture from 75 nations attended this year's event. They included government policymakers, company representatives, academics, researchers, representatives of non-government organizations and others from both the public and private sectors.

In one of the sessions the topic of rising land prices and ownership of land was discussed. The relative stability that farmland offers investors appears to be even more attractive, especially in this time of economic uncertainty. As a result, some investors have been snapping up arable land in places such as Africa, South America, Ukraine and Russia. Agriculture and land have attracted a lot of investor attention in the United States, too.

More money is coming from outside U.S. agriculture to buy farmland

"The amount of funding coming from outside the U.S. ag industry could have a major impact and actually change agriculture in a way that we have not seen in the United States or globally," explains Vanessa Kummer, vice chair of the United Soybean Board (USB) and soybean farmer from Colfax, N.D. "Right now our role is to monitor this closely to find out what effect this could have for U.S. soybean farmers."

Kummer serves as chair of USB's Global Opportunities (GO) program, which tries to get ahead of issues just like this one to identify what they could mean to U.S. farmers. Kummer says USB will monitor this issue closely and keep U.S. soybean farmers informed of the extent of this investment.

The Global Ag Investing Conference, which Kummer attended in New York City recently, examined the growing appetite for investing in agriculture. The conference gave hedge-fund, pension-fund and other investors the chance to learn about agriculture and various farming regions of the world. "This represents a fairly new investment area for some, and there was a large amount of money represented by the group in the room," says Kummer. "These investors have the interest and the ability to affect the agriculture sector." 
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