Private equity used to stay away from anything to do with agriculture, put off by the uncontrollable risks of bad climate and natural disasters. And yet in the last three years some big funds have been launched in the agribusiness space, and they are busy trying different ways of mitigating the risks.
The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector lending arm, will nearly double its investment in agribusiness in Africa to $200 million during the 2009 fiscal year, a senior official said.
Growing crops for strangers, of course, is nothing new. The long, grim march of colonialism was driven by Europe’s penchant for sugar, tea, tobacco and other crops that don’t flourish in northern climes. But as climate change and growing populations put ever more pressure on the earth, state-backed searches for land and food contracts as part of a national food-security strategy strike many as fundamentally new.
The chief of the International Finance Corporation, Lars Thunell, has been holding talks with Saudi finance minister Ibrahim Al-Assa on corporation in areas of joint 'external agricultural investments'.
Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assa also met the chief of the International Finance Corporation, Lars Thunell, and discussed ways to strengthen cooperation between the Kingdom and the IFC in areas of joint external agricultural investments in addition to activating the corporation’s activities in the Kingdom.
The International Financial Corp, the World Bank’s private-sector lender, said on Thursday it will invest $75 million in a new agribusiness fund to increase global food supplies. IFC said it had joined forces with Altima Partners, which manages the $625 million Altima One World Agricultural Fund, to create a fund to invest in farming operations and agricultural land in emerging market countries.
