Sprott Inc. and Ceres Partners have joined forces to launch a fund providing institutional investors with the opportunity to participate in the North American farmland market.
The objective of the Ceres — Sprott Institutional Farmland Fund will be to acquire and actively lease farmland in the United States, according to a news release. 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.
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“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 vice-president of Sprott.
Ceres Partners, an agricultural asset manager based in Indiana, manages Ceres Farms, a fund focused on row crop farmland in the midwestern region of the U.S. It currently owns nearly 100,000 acres of productive farmland across 10 states with total assets under management of approximately US$620 million.
“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, chief executive officer of Ceres Partners.
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