TIAA-CREF

We must recognize and stop the growing takeover of forest, grassland, and farmland by powerful financial actors, which is being perpetrated in the name of new myths of false solutions to climate change.

TIAA is the world’s largest landgrabber, having acquired over 3 million acres of land in a little over a decade, often in places impacted by land-related violence, such as Brazil, Colombia, and in the United States, Phillips County Arkansas.

In the face of intensifying environmental and human rights violations, advocacy groups like Friends of the Earth are calling on the Brazilian and US governments to reign in land speculation and halt the expansion of soy plantations in the Cerrado.

Global institutional investors, led by Canadian pension funds, are piling into the sector, a trend mirroring growing allocations to the farming and related rural sectors worldwide.

AAM Investment Group has sold its 14,074ha Sunshine Farms Aggregation in the Lachlan Valley of New South Wales for an undisclosed sum and the buyer is believed to be the US pension fund manager Nuveen.

As the global demand for food rises and the supply of arable land shrinks, investment managers like Nuveen — a subsidiary of the largest global investor in agriculture, TIAA — see farmland as an attractive asset class.

Some of the world's largest pension funds bet big on Brazilian farmland. Communities, and the climate, are paying the price

The world’s largest manager of farmland assets, Nuveen Natural Capital, has taken advantage of Treasury Wine Estates’ decision to downsize its commercial wine business after acquiring water rights and 434 ha of its orchards.

The Pension Fund has made an initial commitment to Nuveen’s flagship Global Timberland strategy, with the potential for further allocations in both forestry and farmland.

Nova empresa vai incorporar 315 mil hectares da Cosan no valor de R$ 14,6 bilhões e os 170 mil hectares administrados pela Nuveen/TIAA na América Latina, avaliados em cerca de R$ 4 bilhões.

Operation creates Radar Gestão de Investimentos, a joint venture that will manage farmlands of the two companies in Latin America

How US pension fund TIAA purchased farmland with a legacy of racism and murder