Australia

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.

Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), the largest foreign institutional investor in Australian agriculture, has acquired more than 8,000 hectares of farmland in New South Wales from Duxton Farms for A$70m.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan portfolio now includes 130,000 acres of agricultural land globally, from apple orchards to row crop farmland and aquaculture assets, in Australia, Chile, Canada, the US and Portugal

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.

An Australian management fund has nabbed another slice of historic Tasmanian farmland from billionaire Chinese businessman Xianfeng Lu and his troubled dairy company.

Canada's public worker pension fund manager PSP Investments has made a significant stride in Australia's agricultural sector by acquiring a majority stake in Ellerslie Free Range Farms, a leading egg producer, for $180 million.