Cru Investment Management, the UK-based $800 million absolute return investment company, yesterday announced targeting the region and unveiled its plans to offer its new Africa Agriculture Fund in the Middle East early next year .This fund will invest in commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the aim of helping to alleviate poverty in the region, while not compromising returns for investors.
As with timberland, while direct ownership and management (i.e., being a farmer), is a possibility, such a route is similarly fraught with difficulties. One of the most significant of these is the issue of diversification in the farmland itself - especially with a single investment. A well-diversified holding of farmland (row crop, permanent crop, pasture and even timber) will, therefore, not only require a significant investment, but may also involve land holdings in a number of different locations.
The largest fund to invest in European farmland will be launched today, signalling investors' growing appetite for alternative ways to profit from a long-term rise in agricultural commodity demand and prices. The farmland fund, set up by Germany-based Palmer Capital Partners and UK-based Bidwells, is expected to raise about €300m ($425m) to buy arable land in Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic. It will also invest in western Europe.
A UK-based agricultural company, Transformation Agric-Tech Limited, has signed a 30-year Memorandum of Understanding with Ndi Okereke Abam, a rural community in Arochukwu Council area of Abia state for an agricultural project.
A British entrepreneur is leasing land from smallholders in an attempt to revive the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union
Landkom has leased 165,000 acres from thousands of landowners in Ukraine and will reap its first big harvest this year.
Soaring agricultural prices, growing demand for biofuels and the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies are leading top global investment banks to buy farmland in a bid to embrace the physical commodities market.
Since 1999, The Ingleby Company has bought about 17 farms. The company runs just under 20,000ha of land with 130,000 stock units, most of which are sheep and cattle.
