There have been several articles recently indicating that agricultural practices are not going to be able to keep up with demand for a range of reasons including climate change, less predictable weather patterns and now the use of crops for fuel instead of as food.  There was an excellent article in this in this week’s Financial Review and this has also been a lead story on the ABC tonight: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/17/2140619.htm?section=world.

I’ve been working with a client on a business which rejuvenates landscapes and implements sustainable agricultural techniques to dramatically increase the productivity and drought resistance of land.  While it’s gratifying that a lot of the assumptions in his business plan are proving to be highly accurate, it’s alarming also.

If you have an interest in investing in degraded land and seeing it recover and prosper, feel free to get in touch or read more here: http://www.agricominvestments.com.au/.  The concept is an exciting one.

If you are looking for our futurecasting presentation on global trends, please click here.

I’m working with a client on getting seed funding to start what I believe to be a very exciting new business, so much so that I’m taking an active involvement in it on an at-risk basis.

This company aims to generate superior capital returns for it’s clients through rehabilitating landscapes and making properties more productive on a sustainable basis.  It embodies a lot of the things I am passionate about - conservation, sustainable development, property investment, a good risk/return ratio and helping people to improve their businesses (in this case, agricultural potential and drought resilience).

This is a small scale offering, so it can only be offered to sophisticated investors and people I know (for more on this, see section s708 of the Corporations Act). If you fit either of these criteria, would like to get in on the ground floor and have some extra risk capital burning a hole in your pocket, please give me a call. We’re hoping to close stage one very quickly.