Australia

With favourable global economic conditions, including current high commodity prices, and with Australia’s exchange rate at sub USD 0.70, big properties around Australia are changing hands with overseas investors buying in.

The deal is the second $100 million-plus farming transaction involving offshore investors this year, highlighting the global appeal of prime Australian farmland.

Global agricultural investor Nuveen Natural Capital has joined a growing pool of institutional fund managers targeting Australia’s burgeoning macadamia sector, after buying one of the country’s largest orchards

For Minneapolis-based Proterra Investment Partners, the sale represents a second lucrative exit in its agricultural funds, after it sold a 22,386-hectare cropping portfolio in Victoria and South Australia last year.

A large Canadian pension fund which counts the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and defence force workers as members has acquired 35 vineyards in Australia from wine group Casella

Paine Schwartz has increased its stake in Australia’s top grower, packer, and marketer of fresh fruit and vegetables and owner of several blueberry farms in China and Morocco.

Minerva is 35% owned by the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company, which already has 211,000 hectares of farmland and two mutton processing plants in Western Australia.

The Australian government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation has committed up to $30 million to a carbon farming fund that seeks to expand its existing 100,000-acre landholding to 500,000 acres.

Rising interest rates and higher production costs have failed to dent the appetite for prime livestock stations as demand from cashed-up farming families looking to expand outweighs a limited supply of properties for sale.

The $8.7 billion Sydney-based global investor and manager of nature-based property assets has formed New Agriculture to build a much bigger portfolio of agriculture assets.

Macquarie Asset Management is stepping up its investment in farmland, taking control of Cowal Agriculture, a cropping enterprise affiliated with US-based Global Endowment Management.

Foreign investors in Australian rural property now pay up to $1 million in fees when applying to buy farmland or commercial agribusiness assets.