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Billions moving into land buys

October 25, 2012 By bizadmin

Farmland is essentially a long-term investment

Farmland has risen in value at an average rate of 3.4 per cent a year since 1850 in the UK, and at an average of 6.2 per cent since 1967. Farm prices in the US have risen by 150 per cent in real terms over the past century. Some well-known private investors such as Jim Rogers, and some big institutional funds such as America’s TIAA-CREF, are moving billions into purchase of farmland in low-risk nations such as the US, Australia and Canada, and higher-risk areas in South America and East Europe. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Britain, Business, Canada, Europe, Featured, News, USA Tagged With: Agribusiness, Farming Inputs, Farmland, Illiquid, Invest, Investment, Long-term, Production

Basic food crops evolved

October 22, 2012 By bizadmin

Agriculture Business

Basic food crops evolved over an unusually favourable period

There will be increased weather instability, notably floods and droughts, but also steadily increasing heat. The climate is changing and becoming more hostile to farming.

Grains have developed over many thousands of years in an unusually moderate and stable climate (moderate, that is, over a scale of hundreds of thousands of years); and selective breeding of the last few hundred years was also done in that moderate environment. [Read more…]