SOME OF THE CHEAPEST AGRICULTURAL LAND IN ASIA

Chocolate Hills

Mindinao Island is the largest island in the country and home to much of the Philippines’ fertile agricultural land.

Like Jim Rogers, we’ve become bullish on agricultural land as a store of value against money printing madness and other governing factors. People will always need to eat, and Asia’s population of nearly four billion people will consume more food than they have in generations.

While agricultural land in the Philippines is well-positioned to serve the fast-rising Asian continent, we also believe that farmland in Western countries will continue to shrink, creating more demand for imported foods.

Not only that, the Philippines — especially here in the south of Mindinao — is home to some of the cheapest agricultural land in the world.

My contact that brought us to San Isidro used to run a piggery here. She started a business where she actually lived and worked the land to get the process started. She knows the numbers inside and out.

And when she sold her first four-hectare (ten acres) farm almost two years ago, she pocketed almost double what she paid only two years earlier.

Even with a 100% appreciation rate in such a short period of time, her agricultural land — half of which was hilly and suitable for plants, and half of which was suitable for livestock — sold for about $600 an acre.

There’s talk online of acres of buying agricultural land in the Philippines that’s “as cheap as a hamburger”. People tend to point to South America as a place to buy dirt cheap agricultural land; and while farmland in South America can be a bit cheaper than land in the Philippines, it is harder to find in the bite-size parcels that are available in the Philippines.

The law here limits any person who can buy land to five hectares. Beyond that, you either need to start roping in family members, do a work-around with one of the Filipino agriculture companies to invest in, or set up a complicated “agriculture tourism” project to qualify for an exemption to the law.

However, for someone who has a limited amount of money to invest, or someone who even wants to work their land, the Philippines really is a cheap farmland hub. You could get a nice tract of land in the four figures.

But let’s remind you of one of the main agriculture problems in the Philippines. When it comes to investment in this sector: foreigners can’t own land in the Philippines.

https://nomadcapitalist.com/finance/investing/invest-philippines-agriculture-without-getting-dirty/