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Farmland is a theoretically safe, investment producing, inflation-protected hedge.
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Land has proven a decent investment over long periods…[and] has also proven a terrific hedge against inflation.
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The era of cheap food is at an end.
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Farmland in Romania is undervalued relative to some other parts of the European Union.
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Prices [of agriculture commodities and farmland] aren't high enough and most people don't believe it.
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The case for long-term investment is sound... For investors looking to make a long-term commitment to agriculture investment, private equity could offer the biggest rewards.
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Central-Eastern Europe provides a good combination of risk and return... Farmland values are still well below those of Western Europe.
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The market appeared fundamentally sound and that land prices were responding properly to high crop prices.
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The third way to gain exposure to booming soft commodities is by buying farmland.”.
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In the long run, he said, many of the forces that have pushed food prices higher in recent years won't go away, and might even intensify.
Wheat Soars; Rogers Sees 'Much Higher' Food Prices
Published: Tuesday, 3 Aug 2010
By Jim Rogers
The July rise in wheat prices, the fastest in 51 years, indicates that shortages in agriculture are coming, Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC.com Tuesday.
Wheat prices in Europe hit their highest level in two years, rising almost 50 percent since late June as Russia's wheat crop was affected by drought.
"That's the straw that broke the camel's back," Rogers, who has been warning about shortages coming in the agriculture sector for a while, said in a telephone interview.
"We're going to have much, much higher prices over the next few years," Rogers, a hedge-fund pioneer who started the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1970s, added.
Investors finally began to realize that prices for agricultural commodities have been too low for too long because of subsidies and other factors, which made agriculture an unattractive area for workers, he explained.
"Be prepared, if you have a sugar bowl home go fill it up because it's going to be more expensive," he said.
"Anybody who's got potentially good agriculture land and good weather" is likely to emerge a winner out of this situation because prices of nearly all agricultural commodities are set for steep rises, Rogers said.
"Prices aren't high enough and most people don't believe it," he said. "Unless prices are high you're not going to attract people in the business. Eventually people will go into farming again but it's going to take a while."
Shortages in agriculture are likely to add to problems created by governments who printed money to spend their way out of the financial crisis, according to Rogers.
"It's all happening at a time when governments are printing more money… it's a very dangerous situation," he said.
"When you print money, it's got to go in a place where it can protect itself, and that's real assets," he added.
