What is in the database?
Agri Investor’s Database holds live information on active investors in the agri asset class (limited partners), managers of agri funds (general partners) and service providers to both LPs and GPs (investment consultants and placement agents), alongside data on the funds themselves through their fundraising life-cycle.
What do we mean by agri?
For the purposes of the Database, agri is defined as capital raised through limited partnership structures, co-investment funds, separate accounts and private mandates for dedicated programs of investing into agricultural investment products. This includes equity capital for investments into farmland, timberland, aquaculture, agtech and agribusiness companies.Our definition of agri does not include:
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- Private equity (unless a fund invests in agribusiness companies)
- Real estate
- Infrastructure
- Hedge funds
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How do we define a limited partner?
A limited partner (LP) is an institutional investor that commits capital to private funds through limited partnerships. LPs can include corporates, family offices, foundations and endowments, insurance companies, investment firms, pension funds, banks, sovereign wealth funds, fund of fund managers and other select institutional investors. As our primary goal is to track how institutional capital is being invested, our listing of limited partners in the Database does not extend to high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) – many of whom invest via family offices, which we do include – or crowd-funding platforms. For funds that receive commitments from HNWIs and institutional investors, we would add the fund and the institutional investors to the Database but not the HNWIs.
We track investors that commit capital to closed-ended funds managed by general partners. We do not track any investor capital dedicated to a strategy of investing directly into the agri space. Qualified investors must have limited liquidity options and the fund manager must have full discretion over its investment portfolio.
We hold the following information about limited partners on our Database: assets under management, current and target allocation to alternative asset classes, including agri, contact details, current allocation preferences by geography, strategy and sector, appetite for future fund investments, and current and historic fund commitments.
How do we define a general partner?
A general partner (GP) is a fund manager that raises capital from institutional investors through closed-ended fund structures and/or non-fund vehicles with fund-like economics (co-investments, separate accounts, private mandates.) Capital raised through such vehicles is invested by the fund manager directly into agri investments or invested into third-party agri-focused funds through a fund of funds platform.
The fund manager must have full discretion over the investments it makes.
The general partner information that we hold on our Database includes: assets under management, contact details, current investment preferences and fund-level details, such as amount targeted, amount raised, key dates, LPs in the fund, and service providers used.
What strategies do we cover?
Buy and lease
A strategy where a fund or investor buys farmland but does not operate it, leasing it back to farmers instead. The goal is often to generate stable, recurrent revenue.
Own and operate
A strategy where a fund or investor buys farmland to then operate it, sometimes after developing it further (adding irrigation, extra facilities, etc.) The goal here often is to generate some yield, but also capital gains, expecting that post-development the value of the land will appreciate.
Buyout
A strategy where a fund or investor buys a business on the private market (or takes private a listed business) so as to resell it later at a higher price. Typically, these strategies target agribusiness rather than farmland assets.
Venture Capital
An investor or fund investing or buying a company that develops and/or sells early-stage related to agriculture – most often these will target technology.
Debt
A strategy that involves lending money to farmers/businesses involved in agriculture/agribusiness.
What sectors do we cover?
Timber/forestland
All things related to forests.
Water
All things related to water.
Farmland
Permanent crop
Type of crop that is not planted annually as it remains in the field year-on-year. Typically fruit and nut trees.
Row crop
Type of crop that is planted annually; also called annual crop. Examples include wheat, corn, soy.
Livestock
Anything involving animals – cattle, poultry, aquaculture.
Agribusiness
Everything related not to the primary production (the “upstream” – aka farming) but to the transformation and distribution of ag and food produce. We also call it “midstream”. Or even “downstream” if we’re talking retail (though we don’t cover too much of this).
Agtech
Everything related to technology in agriculture/agribusiness.
How do we calculate fundraising statistics?
Our half and full-year fundraising statistics count the final closes of all funds and vehicles with fund-like economics (including co-investments, separate accounts and private mandates) with a closed-ended structure, which meet the above criteria.
Fund in market statistics count closed-ended funds and associated vehicles (co-investments, separate accounts and private mandates) which have launched and/or have held interim closes but have not yet held a final close.
We track the equity capital committed to a fund by institutional investors as well as the equity capital contributed by the GP. Leverage is not included in the size of a fund; we do not count total investable capital.
Our fundraising statistics are all given in a US dollar denomination. To calculate conversion rates for funds that do not have a US dollar-denomination we use an average exchange rate for the year in which a fund held a final close. For funds in market we use the exchange rate for the day in which the statistics are created. For example, H1 statistics will likely use an exchange rate that is correct as at 1 July. All exchange rates are taken from www.xe.com.
Private equity, private debt, infrastructure, private real estate, public funds, hedge funds and open-ended/evergreen funds are not included in our agri statistics. If a fund has some agri exposure but this is not its main strategy, then we will not include the fund in our statistics.