GAI 2012 Pre-Conference Survey Results

April 22, 2012

BILL KIERNAN
Director, GAI Research & Insight

Our Research and Insight function will keep up to date on the most recent trends and developments in the agricultural investment community, synthesize this information and presented it here at globalaginvesting.com. Our flagship conference, Global AgInvesting 2012 is set to kick off this week with over 700 investment professionals, industry experts, government representatives, press and guests in attendance. Prior to this conference, we conducted a survey of attendees to get their latest thoughts on the state of investing in agriculture worldwide. Here are the results:

Attendees at GAI 2012 New York who responded to our survey break down as follows: Attendee Breakdown Chart
Fifty-two percent of respondents already had investments in agriculture, with the balance being interested but not actively evaluating (26%), actively evaluating, but have not made a commitment (17%), or have made an allocation, but have not yet deployed capital into investments (6%).

The following tabulates respondents by type of organization, assets under management and anticipated allocation to agriculture over the next three years:

When asked about what strategies the respondents were pursing within the next three years, they responded as follows. You will of course note that the percentages of each category exceed 100, and this is because respondents were able to check several responses.

The important point about the following graph is that it shows frequency:

Geographic preferences break down as follows:

Interestingly, when the end-investors were asked if their agricultural investments were executed through a fund or whether they made direct investments, they responded as follows:

When respondents were asked what the single greatest challenge they are facing in executing an agricultural investment strategy, they responded as follows:

For those who answered other, their concerns included finding the right partners, finding good farm management, investment execution, finding large tracts of suitable land and restrictions of foreign ownership of farmland.

The reasons respondents gave for investing in agriculture included strong long-term supply and demand fundamentals (61%), Inflation and currency protection (16%), uncorrelated returns (13%) and other responses (9%, primarily including the statement “all of the above).

When respondents were asked why they were attending Global AgInvesting 2012, they responded:

Looking for general education