An intrepid investor’s response to the global food shortage
Entrepreneurs are prone to imaginative recruitment, so when the invitation to pack my bags for Buenos Aires came through, it should not perhaps have taken me by surprise. I have known Jim Slater, the veteran investor-entrepreneur, for several years. We meet periodically to discuss the stock market or play bridge. But the idea that I might join forces with him to go scouting for farmland in South America was not something that had crossed my mind.
It turned out, however, that Jim and his business partner Ian Watson were in the process of liquidating one of their ventures, a listed mining business called Galahad Gold, and were looking to repeat its success in agriculture — which they, in common with George Soros, Lord Rothschild and a number of other smart investors, believed would be the ‘next big thing’. Did I wish to take an interest in this new venture?
The plan was to start a new business which would help fill the growing shortfall of global food supplies engendered by rising demand for protein and better living standards among the emerging middle classes of China, India and other developing countries. Experience long ago taught me to pay attention when serious professionals converge on an unfashionable investment theme. Despite my lack of practical farming knowledge, I found the arguments for investing in agriculture convincing, and agreed to help.
And so it was, in the spring of 2007, that I found myself travelling down the Rio Negro valley in Argentina, camera, notebook and laptop in hand, to report whether a land deal in this region made economic sense. I covered hundreds of miles in a dusty Toyota to survey, among other projects, a potato farm, several fruit farms, and a number of cattle ranches with potential to grow crops on uncleared land.
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