In 2022, I invested in the orange plantations that AgriTerra was selling. This was a long term agriculture play where I would own the land and they would manage the orchard, with the profits after their expenses and fees being sent to my account. Given the potential for long-term cash flow out of this deal, I would love to write a more optimistic review, however, I can’t. The sponsors have, in my opinion, failed in two significant ways. First of all, after more than 3 years, I am still waiting for the official title of the land to be transferred. They said it would take 6-8 months, and have been blaming a variety of factors for the delay. I can certainly understand that the government is not super efficient, however, this lack of delivery has been made worse by a lack of communication on behalf of the sponsors. The last update on the orchard was well over a year ago – so I have no idea how the plants are doing. Emails that I send are rarely responded to – maybe one every 3-6 months gets a reply – and usually the reply is that the person responding has no information to send and they blame the boot-on-the-ground team for not sharing updates. This is incredibly frustrating. The only recent communication I got is that the German part of the company won’t be handling any potential distributions, that it needs to come from the Paraguay part of the company. But that team is even less responsive – and it isn’t clear at all if or when they will do anything. It is entirely possible that the deal is doing fine and will start distributions within the next year (which would be more or less on schedule). However it is also possible that there is nothing underlying this and I have lost all my money. At the very least, it would be nice to know which is the case. Instead, I get constant silence from them. So I continue to hope. In the meantime, I would strongly suggest looking for other investments where the sponsors at least communicate with their investors.
