Australia

There is nothing new about foreign investment in Australian agribusiness. But a number of things are happening now which have not occurred before, writes Mike Pope.

Local stock and station agents in Western District Australia estimate the Qatar government paid a premium of up to 20 per cent in order to secure the controversial deal,

The Middle Eastern company Hassad Foods, through Australian representatives, has been pinpointed as set to spend $45 million on five large western Victorian propertie

Government-backed companies, as Hassad Food, have begun buying up farmland around the world, with Australia’s vast tracts of top quality primary production land a prime target.

The global financial crisis may have hit tax-effective agribusiness schemes hard, but the prospects of the small group of companies that survived are anything but gloomy. "We're actually tapping into the new GFC, which is the global food crisis," says Wayne Overall, executive director of agribusiness managed investment scheme operator Almond Investors Limited

The Swedish National Pension Fund is teaming up with US institutional investor TIAA-CREF to buy farmland in Australia.

"The world is running out of farm land quite rapidly and farm land is going to be a very, very precious commodity in time to come. ... Australians are pretty dozy and comfortable on this issue," says Julian Cribb.

The focus of Aabar on farming investments comes as Gulf nations, including Abu Dhabi, plan billions of dollars of investments in global food supply and infrastructure as they guard against price shocks and supply shortages in core resources.

Subsidiary of Singapore's Wilmar pays $115m for Australia's largest sugar mill operator and plans to buy back former cane land now used for timber plantations to expand sugar production.

Investors are thinking big when it comes to farmland purchases, reports Andrew Shirley in Knight Frank's Wealth Report 2011

Last week, bids closed for an 83% stake in Fonterra's biggest supplier, Dairy Holdings, which oversees 72 South Island farms. Bidders reportedly include Chinese dairy giant Bright Dairy, a pastoral fund owned by Australian investment bank Macquarie Group, British private equity firm Terra Firma. US private equity firm Carlyle Group and the Harvard Endowment Fund.

Swedish pension buffer fund AP2 and US pension fund manager TIAA-CREF have formed a joint venture to invest at least US$500 million in farmland in the US, Australia and Brazil.