Institutional Investors Take Big Farmland Positions

Reuters:

There is an estimated $10 billion in institutional capital looking to acquire U.S. farmland, and over the next 20 years, as the current generation of farmers retires, an estimated 400 million acres will change hands, according to the report issued by The Oakland Institute, a Calfornia-based think tank with a focus on agriculture......
The report acknowledged that individual farmers are still the biggest buyers of U.S. farmland, and says the trend of institutional ownership of farmland is still too new to draw general conclusions about its impacts. But the report said it is "crucial" for policymakers to monitor the trend and "help ensure that farmers, and not absentee investors, are the future of our food system." The report cited three groups as being particularly influential so far in acquisitions of U.S. farmland: The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), one of the largest pension funds in the world; Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), part of the Hancock Natural Resource Group, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corp ; and UBS Agrivest, also known as UBS Global Real Estate-Farmland and a part of the Swiss-based UBS financial services company.
HAIG manages $2.1 billion of agricultural real estate and oversees roughly 290,000 U.S. farmland acres, according to its officials. UBS Agrivest has 113 farms totaling 183,000 acres in 15 states under management. The farms grow over 25 different crops, according to UBS. And TIAA-CREF said that it has roughly 125,000 acres of U.S. farmland.
James McCandless, head of UBS Global Real Estate, said that its properties are leased to local farm operators, mostly family farmers. Institutional investors are driven by a desire to diversify portfolios and achieve the steady income stream benefits associated with farmland, he said.

I never knew what TIAA-CREF stood for.  Those are substantial chunks of farm ground, but I'm not sure how surprising it is that insurance companies are taking positions in land, especially in a market that has been hot.  I seem to remember some insurance companies cashing out of farms they bought back in the late '70s-early '80s boom.  Somebody has to buy at the peak of the market, and better to be an insurance company than a farmer.  Maybe not so good for a pension fund, though.