Sprott Inc. (TSX: SII) and Ceres Partners, LLC have launched the Ceres-Sprott Institutional Farmland Fund to provide institutional investors the opportunity to participate in the North American farmland investment market.
South Bend, Indiana based Ceres Partners is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on food and agriculture. Ceres Partners manages two investment vehicles: Ceres Farms, LLC and Ceres Food & Agriculture Opportunity Fund.
Ceres Farms LLC is a co-mingled farmland investment fund focused on row crop farmland in the Midwestern Region of the United States. Ceres Farms currently owns nearly 100,000 acres of productive farmland across ten states. At September 30, 2017, Ceres Farms had total assets of US $620 million.
Ceres Food & Agriculture Opportunity Fund (FAO) is a private equity fund vehicle that invests growth equity in diverse emerging operating companies in the food and agriculture sector.
“The addition of a farmland strategy supports our objective of providing investors with access to strategies with low correlation to the broader markets,” said Whitney George, Executive VP of Sprott and Chairman of Sprott USA. “As a longstanding investor in Ceres Farms, I have a great deal of respect for Perry Vieth and his team.”
“Farmland is an alternative asset class that we have been investing in since 2007 and we look forward to expanding the relationship between Ceres Partners and Sprott,” said Perry Vieth, CEO of Ceres Partners.
Ceres-Sprott Institutional Farmland Fund will acquire and actively lease farmland in the United States. In addition to renting the farmland to experienced local farmers, the Fund will seek to obtain income from both tillable and non-tillable areas wherever possible in a way that is reasonable given the unique characteristics of each farm parcel.
photo credit: Ted Liu, CPE Media