Australia

Australian agricultural investor and developer GO. FARM, with the help of Qantas Super backing, has acquired the 2666ha Dellapool Aggregation, formerly owned by Ferrero, the global manufacturer of famous brands such as Nutella, Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Surprise.

Agriculture & Natural Solutions Acquisition Corporation announced agreement for a business combination with the iconic Australian Food & Agriculture Company Limited, one of the largest diversified agricultural portfolios in New South Wales

Privately-owned Australian Food & Agriculture Company has sold its 13 New South Wales farms spanning 225,405 ha to NASDAQ-listed Agriculture & Natural Solutions Acquisition Corporation for $780 million.

Swedish pension fund Forsta AP-fonden is downsizing its Australian farmland holdings after listing about $50 million of cropping properties in Western Australia’s Great Southern region.

Canadian super fund manager Alberta Investment Management Corp has completed contracts for its purchase of the Kimberley Meat Co beef processing facility in Western Australia’s Kimberley region that includes pastoral leases covering 475,000 ha.

Silva Capital invests in agricultural land to develop large-scale carbon sequestration projects by reforesting cleared areas, while ensuring the land remains productive for farming.

“Probably the biggest growth is in working with large institutional investors at large pension funds and insurance companies, and also some quite large family offices,” which manages over 300,000 ha of farmland and timberland in the US, Europe and Australia.

Australia's Costa family, which already has 88,000 hectares of farms under management, has announced plans to invest $600 million in a new agriculture fund.

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.

The farmland in Portugal will be acquired from Borges Agricultural & Industrial Nuts, one of the largest nut processing companies in Spain.

Qantas Super plans to generate a higher proportion of returns from the agricultural sector after committing $200 million to the development of high-yielding horticultural crops on properties managed by farmland investor goFARM.

Chinese billionaire Xianfeng Lu has put one of the country’s biggest dairy operations, the nearly 200-year-old Woolnorth farming aggregation in Tasmania, up for sale after losing a big milk supply contract with dairy giant Fonterra earlier this year.