Australia

Australian farmland is an appealing asset class to Canadian-backed investment group, Warakirri Asset Management, with the firm having launched a new fund which expects to raise $500 million.

An unnamed European pension fund has become the cornerstone investor in the just-launched, close-ended Warakirri Farmland Fund, which aims to raise up to €320m in equity.

Saudi Arabia’s state grain buyer SAGO said it has agreed to import 355,000 tonnes of wheat from Saudi Arabian-owned farms in Australia, Canada and Ukraine for delivery from May to December 2021.

An Australian family, backed by one of South Africa's richest men, has bought its sixth Northern Territory cattle property, acquiring Larrizona Station for $17 million.

Bullish returns from farmland investments are likely to falter in 2021 because of Australia's increasingly prickly trade relationship with our huge agricultural export customer, China.

Foreign ownership of farmland in some states has surged to as high as 25 per cent as China maintains its position as Australia's most powerful foreign investor.

Macquarie Group's $300 million takeover bid for a real estate investment trust, which owns vast farms across Australia, could pave the way for more farming deals involving the investment banking powerhouse and the fresh food giant Costa Group.

Macquarie Group, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, has announced that one of its agricultural funds will seek to acquire all of the issued securities in Australian listed farmland REIT Vitalharvest

American pension fund giant TIAA sold its Southern Riverina farming aggregation between Wagga Wagga and Albury in southern NSW to local Australian farmers after more than a decade of ownership.

The sale includes just under 300,000 head of cattle, nine pastoral leases across the Northern Territory and Queensland totalling around 3.2 million hectares, and a 90 per cent stake in a feedlot business in Indonesia.

Australia’s largest dairy operation, Tasmania’s historic Van Diemen’s Land Company, is reportedly on the verge of being offloaded by its Chinese businessman owner Xianfeng Lu.

The $56.5 billion Harvard University Endowment Fund is preparing to sell another chunk of its Australian almond and cotton holdings after putting the Western Rosella Farming portfolio in the NSW Riverina on the market.