Macquarie seeks crop land
- Stock & Land
- 16 August 2010
Macquarie Group's agricultural division has launched a new cropping fund that will buy large-scale grain properties in Australia and Brazil.
Macquarie Group's agricultural division has launched a new cropping fund that will buy large-scale grain properties in Australia and Brazil.
Macquarie Group Ltd. plans to own and run 500,000 acres of soybean and grain farms in Brazil over the next three years
Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management has started up the Macquarie Crop Fund to "acquire or lease grain and oilseed properties located in geographically diverse regions of Australia and Brazil".
Agricultural funds made 9.5% last year, according to data provider BarclayHedge, while almost every other investment opportunity lost money.
The emergence of the farmland asset class is not without pitfalls with the provision of food always highly political and a tentative global economic recovery potentially threatened by the H1N1 flu pandemic, fund managers said.
From Kansas to Kenya, investment opportunities in a range of global farm-related ventures are increasingly drawing capital to what many players and analysts see as the early days of a burgeoning bull market in agriculture.
More important is for Africa to realise its own potential for food production, which would in the long-term negate the need for these deals.
Aimed at public and private market investors, this conference will explore opportunities for global investments in agricultural lands, commodities and infrastructure in North and South America, Australia, China, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Middle Eastern countries flush with oil funds want to invest up to $1bn in Australian farmland as they extend a drive for food security to the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, a grains official said yesterday.