Canada

Hancock Agricultural Investment Group, a Boston-based unit of Toronto's Manulife Financial Corp., decided its first Canadian purchase would be an 1,100-acre (450-hectare) patch of land that it called "one of the most highly productive properties in the industry." The company will not disclose how much it paid, or even the exact location of the farm. But president Jeff Conrad said the company is in Canada to stay, and the fund plans to seek more land.

According to Steve Yuzpe, the CFO of Sprott Resource, ongoing population growth, dwindling arable land, water issues, even the falling yield productivity delivered by genetically modified seeds will be the big drivers for continued record demand—pushing food prices ever higher.

Direct investment in farmland has outperformed stock and bond returns over various timescales with substantially lower volatility than the US equity market, according to Stephen Johnston of Calgary-based Agcapita Partners

While everyone from the Rothschild’s – via the Agrifirma Brazil fund, run with Jim Slater – through to Nicola Horlick and UBS are snapping up farmland in Brazil, I’m fascinated by another niche: Canada and New Zealand.

While ordinary Canadians watch their pensions and jobs evaporate in the global economic mess, those who brought us the crisis have found a new profit-making toy. It’s land-grabbing, 21st-century style. Canada is not being spared.

Trade minister Stockwell Day said that Canada stands to benefit from the Saudi Kingdom’s overseas agricultural investment initiative and that the Canadian Parliament is studying it.

From Kansas to Kenya, investment opportunities in a range of global farm-related ventures are increasingly drawing capital to what many players and analysts see as the early days of a burgeoning bull market in agriculture.

An investor analysis of the case for buying up farmland

Increasingly, the land deals are coming under the scrutiny of the UN and watchdog groups such as Grain, the International Land Coalition and the IFPRI. That's because it is not obvious that they are win-win situations.

Eric Sprott's hunger for commodities may have wavered since last year's price collapse took a hefty strip off revenues at Sprott Inc., his money-management business. However, the legendary hedge-fund manager is still placing bets on at least one commodity: grain.

There are now a few examples in Canada of outside corporations buying and/or leasing land and farming it themselves. In fact, a huge corporate farming entity is being planned for First Nations land in the three Prairie provinces.

Wealthy countries short of fertile land are gazing hungrily at Canada's prairies