From farmprogress.com:
Photo: Holly Spangler
On the wind-swept plains of the heartland, an agricultural revolution is quietly underway. This one’s not led by advances in machinery or biotech, but rather by the inconspicuous behemoths of financial institutions: the institutional investor.
Who are these institutional investors?
Everyday individual investors make up the entities buying farmland, bringing together funds from people of various professions and backgrounds. Individual investors are people just like you and me: teachers, health-care workers, civil servants contributing to pension funds, or affluent individuals or families engaged with mutual funds or private equity funds. They can also be linked to religious, academic or cultural organizations with sizable endowments.
The attraction of institutional investment vehicles lies in their ability to unlock opportunities that would otherwise be unreachable for individuals.
Institutional investors leverage professional expertise, including financial advisers and fund managers, to make informed investment decisions. They employ a systematic approach to investing, involving rigorous analysis, complex strategies and risk management practices. They garner the benefits of scale, driving down costs, granting access to opportunities not available for smaller investors and potentially boosting returns for those who invest.