Research & Data

The sector’s pandemic-related challenges are unlikely to impact credit ratings of Farm Credit System institutions or rated commercial banks active in agriculture, says managing director Julie Solar.

NCREIF’s Q1 results showed US farmland delivered a negative return for the first time in almost 20 years, but the coronavirus played a very small part in it.

The University of Illinois professor says growing global production and uncertainties surrounding trade and income helped produce the first negative quarterly cumulative farmland return recorded by NCREIF in 19 years.

The NCREIF Australian Farmland Index, which is heavily weighted to permanent cropping, shows total returns held up fairly well despite drought across much of eastern and northern Australia.

Refinitiv director of agricultural research Daniel Redo says congestion on China's ports is finally starting to ease but covid-19 has compounded global soybean exports woes.

Rabobank’s Global Dairy Quarterly finds upwards price growth in late 2019 stalled early this year, with the uncertainty over covid-19 leading to investors scrambling to assess the impact.

Assistant professor Sandro Steinbach says China’s use of new supply chains is likely to hurt the state’s exports more significantly in the long term.

Despite a small drop in overall venture capital investment into agriculture and food technology startups, market segments such as alternative protein and regions such as Europe and LatAm registered strong fundraising performance.

Interest from institutional investors and private equity remains strong in Australian agriculture despite difficult conditions because of a belief in the asset class’ ‘long-term thesis’.

The annualized return to the end of September 2019 was 14.37% but continuing drought means that income returns are especially likely to fall further in upcoming quarters.