Against this backdrop, good agricultural land is becoming more valuable and top farmers are in demand – those who can improve yields, use less water and show that they are environmentally aware.
The Global Sustainable Farmland Income Trust is designed to give investors access to productive farmland and pioneering farmers around the world.
The first of its kind, the trust is expected to deliver total returns of 7-8 per cent a year, including dividends and capital growth.
Eh?
The land’ll have to be pretty cheap to start with, won’t it?
Off-topic but Tim, maybe you need another category heading “Woken SS”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51261999
The land’ll have to be pretty cheap to start with, won’t it?
Alternatively the capital growth would need to be impressive. With most land being given over to growing trees the value of arable land will soar.
RICS data suggests the gross rental yield on UK arable land is less than 2%.
So the fund will be looking for land further afield…
The first of its kind, the trust is expected to deliver total returns of 7-8 per cent a year, including dividends and capital growth.
Sounds positively Murphyesque.
As they say: “the value of your investment may go down as well as up.”
I think I can guess which way this one will go.
‘Global Sustainable Farmland Income Trust’
They call it ‘Sustainable’ to show they aren’t serious.
‘is designed to give investors’
It is for speculators, not investors.
‘access to productive farmland and pioneering farmers around the world.’
Investors and ‘pioneering’ don’t go together.
‘the trust is expected to deliver total returns of 7-8 per cent a year, including dividends and capital growth.’
As long as new money keeps coming in to cover it. Then the scheme collapses. And the principles go to prison.
I think I made the comment some time ago on here that I reckoned as the Green mania rose, it was almost certain that the grifters would move in to extract as much money from the gullible as possible. And its the perfect scam because you are not so much appealing to the marks greed, but their sense of altruism to be ‘doing something for the planet’. Looks like a great idea to part the woke from their cash. I wish I’d thought of it……
“Demand for food is growing as the population increases and incomes rise in poorer countries.”
That would be the same story that I’ve been reading in the farming press since I was knee high to a grasshopper then. We’ve constantly been told – just you wait, all those starving billions will all need feeding, farming will be a gold mine, we’ll all be driving around in Bentleys! And it wasn’t true 40 years ago, and its not true today either. Production has consistently outstretched consumption and prices today are the same as they were 30 years ago in nominal terms, forget inflation.
And the whole thing begs the question, if you are a ‘pioneering innovative farmer’ capable of increasing yields and currently farming productive land etc why the hell would you be sharing any of the profit with anyone else?
Q: How can we feed 8 billion people?
George Carlin: If we can’t feed 8 billion people, there won’t be 8 billion people.
Apart from the potential for a spot of nominative determinism, what with one of the principals being “Miserey” and all, I’m not wholly confident that idea can be easily dismissed.
The target return would be to asset value, so writing up the value of the land on the back of arm’s length transactions, or actual increases in revenue from production (swapping crops) might make a significant dent in that, as opposed to cash dividends. From what the poxy Mail article is wibbling on about, getting on the right side of the next superfood would help. And it’s priced in USD, so some helpful FX can’t be ignored. Or get the fixed/floating charges sorted out.
Given the demographics, Asian healthcare sounds like a much better bet to me.
Yes I hear people are dying to get into it
Bernie Madoff is CEO ?
@Jim
+1
Also, in UK less farm-land is used than 30 years ago, yet more food harvested
Jim;
Ever heard of LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming)? Info at leafuk.org.
This thing appears to require adherence to the idea from tenants, and I am beginning to wonder what the actual underlying bet is, in particular with regard to the intended asset allocation to the US (70%) with regard to the Amazon / Whole Foods acquisition – and USD300m isn’t a yuge amount of dosh.
(And whilst I’m at it; this fucking poxy abortion of posting too quickly – Tim, stop talking to the oily rag, start talking to the fucking engineer.)
Yes I have heard of LEAF. Never fancied getting involved myself. All seems a bit too much of ‘the great and the good’ about it all. Plus I’ve gotten burned before getting involved in unpaid environmental stuff on my farm – the trouble is that governments don’t like people taking their own initiative on such things, and you end up losing out. I for example, having stupidly listened to exhortations by people like LEAF to remove unproductive parts of ones land from arable production, did so, and planted areas of game cover instead. Which while aimed at pheasant rearing also provide lots of nice habitats for other wildlife. All done voluntarily and not as a paid thing. Then a few years down the line Defra introduced new schemes to pay you to do exactly this sort of thing. Great, I thought, I’m already ahead of the game, I should get some reward for what I’ve done.
But no. Because you see as I’d removed the land from production voluntarily more than X years prior, it no longer qualified as arable land and therefore the only way I could get paid was to spray it all off, plough it all up for a year then apply for one of their schemes. Plus of course what I’d planted wasn’t on the official list of approved cover crops, so wouldn’t have qualified anyway.
So I ignored the lot of it and left things as they were. I’ve got barn owls, brown hares, deer by the herd (literally, there must be 50+ wild deer floating around my farm, its quite usual to see small herds of 5-10 of them), buzzards, kites, so I must be doing something right.
As far as I can see, most of this ‘environmental’ stuff, certainly as it applies to farming, is just make work schemes for middle class graduates. More importance is made about adhering to ‘the rules’ (as created by middle class graduates of course) than any actual benefits to flora or fauna.
@Jim
Spot on. Applies to so many Gov’t schemes
Grant for: wood, boiler, pv, insulation…. must use approved installer who charges x2 to x4 what others charge, or not eligible as have already done xyz to be “good, sensible”
Why don’t you harvest the Venison?