Foreign investors buying up the farm: AAG
The "serious money" being funnelled into Australian agribusiness is coming from overseas, according to Australian Agribusiness Group managing director Marcus Elgin.
"Our superannuation funds industry is absolutely blinkered to the option of investing in farmland. And I understand why that is, because the performance of most of the other people working in this sector has been less than attractive for them," Elgin said.
Australian Agribusiness Group directly invests client money in "genuine farmland" including dairy, meat and some horticultural crops, he said.
"We're buying real farms, improving their performance and running them - either on an active or a passive basis," Elgin said.
While the Australian Agribusiness Group may have more Australian investors by absolute number, the "serious money" is coming from overseas, he said.
And despite the "noise" generated in the media, the reality is that Chinese investors don't dominate the sector, Elgin added.
"In terms of large-scale investment in Australia, the biggest investors in farmland are Americans, Europeans, South Koreans and Qataris," he said.
Institutional and individual investors overseas do not see farmland as "the alternative of alternatives, way out there on a limb with stamp collecting and art", Elgin said.
"I've been knocking on the door of superannuation funds in Australia for eight years, and in all of that time they've been telling me how shocking it is to invest in agriculture," he said.
While the average return of APRA regulated funds in the past eight years has been 3.4 per cent, AAG has returned 9.4 per cent to investors in the same period, Elgin said.
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