While Canadian agriculture shows some promise, institutional investors have been active on the global front, particularly when it comes to farmland.
- Benefits Canada
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11 April 2017
Brazil says it is pushing ahead with plans to change the law and let foreigners buy farmland, in a move widely backed by investors and opposed by land rights campaigners.
- Thompson Reuters Foundation
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16 February 2017
AP Pension, the Danish labour-market pensions provider, has hit out at media reports that its chief executive quit in December because of pressure from the supervisory board to invest in the agricultural sector.
Now and into 2017 agribusiness is being promoted as the next big thing, with increasing market activity, resulting in land and asset values accelerating at a greater rate towards a peak as local and international demand increases.
Canadian investors - particularly pension funds - have led the way in changing Australian city money attitudes to agriculture.
- Farm Weekly
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16 January 2017
This notorious palm oil industry has now expanded to Myanmar with devastating consequences for human rights and the environment
Pension fund giant TIAA is investing its clients’ funds in farmland and agribusinesses tied to environmental and human rights abuses in Latin America.
Friends of the Earth and As You Sow are circulating a letter to TIAA clients calling on the firm to disclose information about all of its investments in companies with farmland and palm oil operations, and to commit to a deforestation- and land grab-free investment policy.
- Mongabay
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27 November 2016
The notorious reluctance of Australian superannuation funds to invest in agriculture because of perceptions it is too risky, volatile and low-return may be slowly changing, according to key farm and food industry players.
- The Australian
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21 November 2016
Montreal-based Fiera Capital Corp. is taking the next step in its aggressive expansion plans that include adding agriculture and private equity to its current asset class offerings.
New animated video shows how a global farmland fund, managed by US financial giant TIAA-CREF, used a complex company structure to avoid restrictions on foreign investment in farmland in Brazil.
Bain & Company analysis has identiied four approaches that public companies are taking to invest in agriculture.
- Bain & Co
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01 November 2016
TIAA pays R$1.1 billion to increase its stake in Radar Propriedades Agrícolas S.A, a joint-venture established in partnership with Cosan in 2008 which owns and manages rural properties in Brazil.
US giant TIAA's Westchester has purchased a major part of northern NSW cropping farm Milton Downs from Australia's biggest wheat grower Greentree Farming for a figure some estimate to be in the vicinity of $50 million.
Milltrust has a 10 year, billion dollar program to establish farms in the southern hemisphere to produce rice, wheat, corn and barley, as well as new cash crops that will provide feedstock for animals.
Friends of the Earth warns investors they could be unknowingly contributing to deforestation and land grabs, and calls on them to show leadership
A Brazilian businessman involved in the acquisition of farmland by US, Canadian, German and Swedish pension funds could face criminal charges for land grabbing.
- Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos, GRAIN, Inter Pares, Solidarity Sweden-Latin America, FIAN and National Family Farm Coalition
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20 July 2016
European Union (EU) corporate and financial entities involved in land grabbing may be implicated in a variety of human rights abuses.
The Bank will itself invest US $24 billion and leverage additional investments through equity, quasi equity, debt and risk instruments to catalyze investments at scale from the private sector and with co-financing from traditional donors and new players.
Land speculation stimulates the expansion of plantations across Brazil, increasing land conflicts and displacement of campesino and Indigenous communities.
Wall Street remains enamored with US and international farmland, speakers at a Farm Foundation meeting in Louisville said last week.
- Progressive Farmer
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14 June 2016
Eight years after releasing its first report on land grabbing, GRAIN publishes a new dataset documenting nearly 500 cases of land grabbing around the world.
Glencore Plc agreed to sell just-under a 10 percent stake in its agriculture unit to Canada’s British Columbia Investment Management Corp. for $624.9 million in cash as it continues to cut debt.
Australian agricultural assets remain a major a drawcard for international investors with a string of mainly US-based investors funnelling hundreds of millions into a $1 billion fund established by the Queensland agribusiness investment firm, Laguna Bay Pastoral Company.
- The Australian
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02 June 2016
Australia's cattle station sector is set to reach more than $1 billion-worth of deals in less than a year, with the two biggest sources of investment being the controversial areas of foreign investment and superannuation.
Farm Foundation, NFP, along with USDA’s Economic Research Service and Bank of America Merrill Lynch host a workshop on the implications of non-farmer investor interest in agricultural resources.
Denmark’s AP Pension is expanding its exposure to agricultural land in a proposed new deal to buy farmland in eastern Romania and lease it back to the Danish company operating farms on the land.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is in advanced talks to buy a stake in Miner and commodity trader Glencore Plc's agricultural business, which has farming operations covering 270,000ha in Argentina, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Ukraine.
The funds will acquire farms and farmland assets, including permanent crops, arable, and pastoral farmland, and lease to experienced operators across the focused geographical regions of Australia and New Zealand.
Financial investors own tracts that grow maize and soya beans in Illinois and Uruguay, almonds and cattle in Australia, and sugar beets and wheat in Poland. Some are venturing into countries with potentially volatile politics, such as Ethiopia and Ukraine.