October 9, 2017

Ceres Partners has joined with Sprott, a Toronto-based alternative asset manager, to launch the Ceres-Sprott Institutional Farmland Fund. Through the vehicle, the partners are looking to provide institutional investors access to investment opportunities in North American farmland along with management services by Ceres Partners – an experienced provider.

“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 and chairman of Sprott USA.

Headquartered in Indiana, Ceres Partners is a specialist agricultural asset manager that has launched two prior funds. The first, Ceres Farms LLC –  a co-mingled investment fund launched in 2007, focused on row crop farmland in the Midwest region of the U.S. Ceres Farms currently owns approximately 100,000 acres across 10 U.S. states with a combined value of $620 million as of September 30, 2017. The second fund managed by the firm is the Ceres Food & Agriculture Opportunity Fund. Launched in 2015, the fund was developed to invest growth equity in emerging companies in the food and ag sectors.

Based in Toronto, and with offices in New York, Carlsbad, and Vancouver, Sprott is a global asset manager and leader in the real asset and metal investment spaces. Through its subsidiaries across North America and Asia, Sprott provides investors with alternative asset management, exchange listed products, and private resource investments.

The Ceres-Sprott Institutional Farmland Fund will acquire and actively lease farmland in the U.S., which it will then lease to experienced local farmers. However, the fund also will look to gain cash flow from alternative means depending on the property.

“…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,” said the companies in a joint release.

“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.

-Lynda Kiernan