TLG manages 20,000 hectares of farmland in Uruguay producing beef, soybeans, rice, and timber on behalf of European pension funds, insurance companies and family offices.
US-based Washington State Investment Board has committed another $A350 million to Queensland-based farm investor Laguna Bay Pastoral Company.
- Queensland Country Life
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02 Mar 2022
Thirty CSOs call on the governments responsible for overseeing the development banks to take action to redress the harms caused to the communities from their investment oil palm plantation company PHC/Feronia.
- Collective statement
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28 February 2022
Canadian fund pours $600 million into farming operation in Maui that threatens water supplies vital to Indigenous farmers
- The Breach
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23 February 2022
The Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana has approved a $50m commitment to PGIM’s US agriculture fund.
Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) is buying into TIAA-CREF’s global farmland funds with a $456m investment.
As community efforts to reclaim 100,000 ha of their ancestral land are met with violent repression, unlawful arrests, and murder, a new report exposes the financiers profiteering from the plantations in the DR Congo.
- Oakland Institute
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08 February 2022
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation along with a number of prominent US university endowments are among the top investors in a troubled set of oil palm plantations in the DRC, according to a report from the Oakland Institute.
- Mongabay
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08 February 2022
The pandemic-fueled land rush has brought wealthier buyers to rural areas, making land even harder to access—a crisis that has become especially acute in the Northeast of the US.
- Civil Eats
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06 January 2022
With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water?
- The Counter
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04 January 2022
The PHC oil palm plantations provide 100 years of lessons about the failures of agricultural, financial and governance systems in a globalized world.
- InfoCongo
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23 December 2021
In April 2021, the Netherlands-based Kempen Capital Management (Kempen) launched the SDG Farmland Fund – a new investment solution to offer institutional investors global access to farmland as an asset class.
Listen to an interview with Maria Luisa Mendonça of Rede Social on US teachers' pension fund TIAA investments in Brazil land grabbing and deforestation.
- Free City Radio
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17 November 2021
In 2013, mammoth US investment company TIAA-CREF gave $5 million to the University of Illinois to fund a research center, branded with the company’s name, that would explore the financial niche of farmland investment.
- Illinois Newsroom
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16 November 2021
European firms are involved at different stages of the supply chain of soy, meat and metal – industries which are the main drivers of the deforestation of the Amazon and Cerrado regions in Brazil
A campaign by U.S. and Brazilian activists challenging TIAA and other financial firms’ complicity in land grabs and deforestation in Brazil is scoring major victories.
- Waging Nonviolence
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01 October 2021
The Development Bank of Japan is the first in Japan to agree to invest in a food-focused private equity fund by backing a fund managed by Proterra Investment Advisors (Proterra Asia).
Brazilian sugar company Cosan has purchased a stake in the land holding company Grupo Radar from the US pension fund manager TIAA for $278 million, giving it over 50% ownership.
- Reuters
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21 September 2021
Farmland grabs by US companies and pension funds are being ignored as appropriators prioritise keeping Chinese interests in check, critics say
Agriculture, long overlooked as a handy defensive investment space by fund managers more interested in infrastructure, commercial real estate and shopping centres, has become the focus of big spending activity of late.
Reporting by Agência Pública has revealed how investors including U.S. pension funds and an Argentine agribusiness giant may be linked to illegal land deals and deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado region.
Investigation into the controversial palm oil sector in Liberia, the role of Dutch finance and impacts on local communities
- Financieel Dagblad
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13 July 2021
CEFF II raised $1 billion from a group of institutional investors, mostly pension funds, to invest in high-tech greenhouses, indoor, vertical farms, and other sectors that need controlled environment agriculture facilities.
Banks, retirement funds, retail investors, boutique asset managers, and even some nonprofits and universities are doubling down on farmland investments, making it increasingly difficult for farmers of color to access land.
- Food & Power
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08 July 2021
An Australian company backed by Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board has purchased a grain farm in Yuna, Australia for about $30 million
Une bataille juridique a éclaté sur la propriété des Plantations et Huileries du Congo, une entreprise qui contrôle plus de 100 000 hectares de terres pour des plantations de palmier à huile en République démocratique du Congo.
- Oakland Institute
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24 June 2021
After acquiring majority ownership in the PHC plantations from European development banks in 2020, former partners have turned on each other with legal action underway across four jurisdictions for control of the company, valued at US$100 million.
- Oakland Institute
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22 June 2021
Quienes actualmente controlan los flujos financieros del mundo no son capaces de apoyar a los productores de alimentos y a los sistemas alimentarios —que pueden combatir la crisis climática o las muchas otras crisis que afectan a la alimentación y a la agricultura. Nuestro desafío es lograr que tanto las tierras agrícolas como el dinero no sigan en sus manos, tan pronto como podamos.
New information indicates that Feronia's $15 million rice operations were taken over by a politically connected Belgian-Congolese businessman when they mysteriously vanished from the company's books in 2017.
PSP, one of Canada's largest pension investment managers, now adds a further 40,000 hectares to its large farmland holdings in New South Wales.