Farming as Financial Asset - Stefan Ouma

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also wish to thank many other people who contributed to this project. Peter Lindner of Goethe University (Frankfurt) has been supportive throughout my career, ever since we started working together in 2007. My colleagues Julian Stenmanns, Iris Dzudzek, Alex Vorbrugg, Tim Brückmann and Mara Linden have provided critical feedback on various parts of this book. In the United States, a number of people were very helpful in facilitating my research, including Professor Bruce Sherrick at Illinois State University.

      Many insights related to my Aotearoa New Zealand case studies benefited enormously from discussions with Nick Lewis, Richard Le Heron, Matt Henry, Mike Roche, Russel Prince, Christina Stringer, Ann Pomeroy, Christina Berneheim and Wendy Larner. Harvey Perkins and Geoff Lawrence were both extraordinarily generous, providing feedback on several of the draft chapters at an early stage. Tobias Klinge, now a PhD student at the University of Leuven, conducted excellent research on the regulation of foreign investments in Aotearoa New Zealand forestry and agriculture as part of a master’s study supervised by me at Goethe University in 2018. His work informs several parts of this book. In Tanzania, Mangasini Katundu of Moshi Cooperative University, a partner in the project funded by the German Research Council that partly informs this book, particularly assisted with fieldwork. Dennis Malele of the same institution provided additional findings on one of the Tanzanian case studies. Many other people had their fair share in facilitating my research there, including Emmanuel Sulle, Brian Cooksey, Martina Locher, Hazel Gray, Andrew Coulson, Faustin Maganga, Esther Towo and the great team at COSTECH.

      This book would also not exist without the “technical” support of Frieda Gresch, Petra Turba, Elke Alban, Thea Fechner, Alexander Melchert, Julia Blauhut, Ian Copestake and Susan Askvik. This technical support also includes some quite “big players”. Market intelligence providers Savills (London) and Valoral Advisors (Luxembourg) kindly shared data on the “AG investment” space with me, and Preqin (London) and Agri-Investor (London), two other data service providers, gave me special subscription deals within the range of my research budget. That I had this budget at all is thanks to the German Research Council, which funded a part of the underlying research between 2017 and 2020 (grant no. 363300598). Other sources of financial support were the Centre of African Studies, via the support of Marc Boeckler at Goethe University and the chair of economic geography at the same institution (again, thanks to Peter Lindner!). I am also glad that some investment conference organizers had mercy on me and let me take part at their events at reduced rates.

      Finally, I would like to thank the team at Agenda, Steven Gerrard and Alison Howson, and two anonymous reviewers, as well as the editors of Agenda’s Economic Transformations series: Jamie Peck, Brett Christophers, Rebecca Lave and Marion Werner. Without their encouragement, I would probably never have written this book. In particular, Brett’s work has had a huge influence, and I am glad that both our interests have recently converged around the finance–land nexus (for him, more public land, though).

      A note of extra thanks goes to some very special people. During my research, and the writing of this book, my partner Eva and daughter Adele Akinyi, joined by Amina Luz in October 2019, had to cope with my partial physical and mental absence. I do not take such sacrifices for granted, and would like to thank them for their love and patience.

       Stefan Ouma

      Bayreuth

       Illustrations

      FIGURES

       4.1Comparison of two leading sources of agri-finance market intelligence

       4.2The many entry points for finance in global food and agriculture asset classes

       4.3Evolution of investment funds specialized in food and agricultural assets, 2005–2018

       4.4Development of the Global Farmland Index, 2002–2015

       4.5The geography of agri-investment-focused pension funds

       4.6Actors along the agri-investment chain

       4.7Investment funds specialized in food and agriculture by main region

       4.8Agri-focused investment funds by target region and strategy

       5.1Data snapshot, agricultural investments New Zealand, 2001–2017

       5.2Dairy farm land valuation in time

       6.1Risk–return profile of Illinois farmland compared to other asset classes, 1970–2013

       7.1Inside the investment calculus

       7.2A comparison between two investment chains touching down in Aotearoa New Zealand (Case 7) and Tanzania (Case 2)

       7.3The deal cycle

       8.1Changes in land use per region in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2008–2012

       9.1How to get into the doughnut, and the forms of finance that may help

      PHOTOGRAPHS

       6.1NGO campaign for pension funds’ divestment from farmland and agriculture

       7.1From “Third World solidarity” to private equity: a large-scale grain farm in Central Tanzania

       7.2Aggregated assets: (left panel: a new mega dairy farm in Aotearoa New Zealand, monitored via helicopter; right panel: a vertically integrated poultry-feed-complex in Tanzania)

      TABLES

       4.1Largest closed funds in the market, 2018

       6.1Example of an ESG framing in an Africa-focused asset manager’s annual report

       7.1Different types of agricultural investment structures

       7.2How leveraging works

       8.1Labour impact of investment chains sampled

       Chapter 1

       Introduction

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