Brazilian farm operator SLC Agricola unveiled its first large farm acquisition in more than two years, buying into the country’s slowing land market.LandCo, a subsidiary of SLC, paid R$77.99m ($19.64m) for 13,288 hectares of farmland in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s top corn and soybean producing state, taking the group’s portfolio to nearly 321,000 hectares – an area about the size of the US state of Maryland, of the UK county of Gloucestershire.
TORONTO The UN FAO has released data showing that global food prices have experienced the steepest monthly drop since 2008, casting doubt upon concerns about the impact of ethanol production in food price increases.The recent decline in food prices has coincided with a period of record ethanol production expansion, reaching a high of 94 billion litres in 2014 from 83.5 billion litres in 2012, a 10% increase over this period.
Brazil’s second, or safrinha, corn harvest has proven even bigger than was thought, with officials citing “excellent vegetative growth” for another upgrade to their production estimate. The official Brazilian government crop supply agency, Conab, raised its forecast for the safrinha corn crop, which is currently being harvested, to 51.55m tonnes, up from an estimate last month of 49.38m tonnes.
Canada’s largest alternative asset manager, Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, has reportedly raised $300 million for its new agricultural fund created to target Brazilian farmland.The firm is aiming for corpus of $500 million for its Brookfield Brazil Agricultural Fund II, with maximum of $700 million set. The investment fund will be used primarily to acquire cattle ranches that will be converted into soybean and sugarcane farms.
Bloomberg Business – May 5th, 2015 Brazil is looking at easing restrictions on the acquisition of land by foreigners to boost investment in agriculture and forestry as Latin America’s biggest economy heads toward its worst year since at least 1992. An effective prohibition on selling lnd to foreign individuls nd compnies hs been in plce […]