The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relative to wealth advisors and their clients.

Nuveen, the investment manager of US-based TIAA, has widened its partnership with alternative investment platform iCapital, taking particular aim at agriculture-related investment.

The Nuveen Global Farmland strategy is managed by Nuveen Natural Capital. It invests across regions with an asset mix including wine grapes in Napa, Monterey, Sonoma and Madera counties in California; US row crops, including corn, soybean, rice, cotton and other vegetables; and horticulture crops such as almonds, raisin grapes and pistachios.

This is the fourth Nuveen private market strategy available to wealth advisors and their clients on iCapital’s technology platform, Nuveen said in a statement yesterday. 

Rising population pressures – at least for the next few decades – and technology innovation are driving changes in farmland values, Nuveen said.

According to Nuveen’s annual EQ Global Institutional Investor Survey, the percentage of institutional investors globally that plan to increase their allocation to farmland over the next two years increased from zero in 2021 to 18 per cent 2022.

The firm said agricultural land, as measured by the US-only NCREIF Farmland Index, has outperformed domestic stocks and bonds on an annualized basis over the last 48 years. The NCREIF Farmland Index’s total return has consistently provided returns of more than double the inflation rate since 1991.

This news service has examined the case for agricultural investing on a number of fronts. Part of the trigger for increased interest is a worry about food security caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the world’s most important suppliers of wheat.