I am realtor, offering farmland, ranches, rural real estate in Uruguay and Argentina. In the first place I am myself an investor in farmland with own funds, though on smaller scale than these words might imply.

Investment in farmland is now not as exotic an investment as it was 4 or 5 years ago. The fuel crop story is present everywhere, so is Emerging Asia’s hunger for (agro) commodities, and also a trend to hard, palpable, assets that would survive any economically stormy wheather.
Farmland valuations rose quite strongly in many parts of the world since 2004, so these macro aspects are, to some extend, priced in allready.
Have farmland prices still some way to go upwards ?
Possibly so.
However one is no doubt on the safer side when investing in countries where agricultural income is generated without the help of subsedies, as is the case in the countries of South Africa, Australia and South America.
If one wants an environment with strong property rights, social stability, European way of live, leaving aside Australia and New Zealand due to high valuations and labour costs, one soon narrows it down to the countries of Southern South America, Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil, Chile.

All properties you find in the “offers farmland, agro investments” section to the right are located in the Pampa Humeda, the plains of Argentina (Provinces Buenos Aires, Entre Rios) and Uruguay, with its black rich agricultural soils, similar to the Prairie States of the US Midwest and a temperate climate with roughly 1.000 mm of rainfall rather evenly distributed annually. They are viable investments in agriculture. They can be run as cattle ranches, as stud / equestrian estate, polo ranch, farmed, planting crops like soya, corn, wheat, sorghum, grow wine, fruits. There are few natural limitations.

The link ”offers tourism, beach, rural residence” leads to our offers of residential properties, be it by the coast or in the countryside, they are properties that do not have the main emphasis on agriculture, and properties apt for development.

I am an afficionado of grand and historic estates of South America, of the Gentleman Rancher’s lifestyle that comes with that. So I always try to have some of the old Estancias, Haciendas, Fazendas included in the listings, listed under ”offers colonial estates – historic architecture”

A new line of land investments is ”virgin land in the Northern Paraguay Chaco”, which we offer since Sept.2007 where prices are still amazingly low and where we see potential for strong appreciation

Hamburg, January 2008
Peer Voss
pvoss@pvoss.de