Jim Rogers, the professional investor, has been appointed to the board of the farmland investment firm Genagro Ltd as a Non-Executive Director.
The appointment is part of a reorganisation of the board following the sale of a majority controlling interest in Genagro’s first farmland investment, Agrifirma Brasil, to a Brazilian private equity group. Genagro, which was founded by Ian Watson and Jim Slater in 2008, expects to make further investments in early stage farmland or farming-related businesses in advance of a planned listing of its shares, provisionally targeted for 2013.
In addition to managing his own money as chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Mr Rogers is a well-known broadcaster and speaker on trends in global markets, and the author of several books, including Hot Commodities, A Bull in China and Investment Biker. A graduate of Yale and Oxford University, his early career was spent on Wall Street, where he co-founded the Quantum Fund in 1973.
Recognising in the late 1990s that the world was facing the onset of a global boom in commodities, and agriculture in particular, he devised the Rogers International Commodity Indices, a widely used series for tracking the movement of global commodity prices. In February 2011 he created the Rogers Global Resources Equity Index to track the price of a basket of leading natural resources shares (the agriculture, mining, metals and energy sectors, as well as solar, wind and hydro).
Commenting on the appointment, Ian Watson, chairman of Genagro Ltd, says: “Jim Rogers has been helping us for some time as a member of our advisory board. With a new chapter for the firm now opening, as we look to expand our investments outside Brazil, we are looking forward to drawing on his vast knowledge, experience and network of contacts as a full member of the board. I cannot think of anyone better qualified to help us”.
Rogers says: “I have been on record for years that the future is going to belong to farmers. The world is facing a growing demand for food and animal feed. It urgently needs private sector capital, management expertise and technology to bring new areas of farmland into productive use. Genagro is one of a new breed of entrepreneurial companies with high environmental standards which are helping to meet that demand, and I am greatly looking forward to helping the company in this important task”.
