A Grand Rural Estate

If you are 51 like me, you might have  fantasies, too, about the family fortune (big or small)  lasting over generations or better centuries. My thoughts inevitably turn to the old (noble) families (I am western European, German) with their grand rural estates. For me there is no other asset class that stands that much for continuity over centuries, for defining a family, for anchoring a family.
And we perceive it as cool. Just look at the various clothing labels, how they play with the landed gentry lifestyle, to sell us their coats and jackets, from Barbour to Ralph Lauren to I don't know what.

Now what is interesting, farmland is quite a rational asset class. It is a play of palpable asset vs paper asset, a play of limited supply (global fertile land) to rising demand (of food).
If you have 3 or 4 million US$ to spare, think of it.
Starting from US$3m in South America, US$5m in North America or Eastern Europe, there are some properties in the market that would be both a reasonable farm investment and a cool rural lifestyle investment.
Only downside being that farmland prices rose quite a bit globally over the last couple of years.

historic Estancia in Uruguay

you got them in the US, too, where not gone with the wind

gold vs farmland

While gold is not an asset which supply can be inflated by a central bank, the world’s gold  stock increases all the time by roughly 1,5% annually, so it is a relative but not an absolute protection against inflation. Certainly not the way fertile land is.

Further more, my understanding is that the value of an asset is ultimately based on how it serves you. A house houses you, farmland feeds you, a company share entitles you to participate in that company’s earnings (if they materialise), an automobile allows you to get around.
Gold serves to fill your bad tooth, be converted into nice jewelery, plus some odd industrial uses, and that is, acording to wikipedia, where 60% of the gold production goes. And it remains to be seen if that percentage does’t decrease with gold costing above US$1600.
So, 40% are bought by individuals and institutions that will not get anything out of it, sticking to that narrower sense of an asset serving in some way.

In comes the argument that it is a storage of value. And obviously as a storage of value it is aquired by the latter 40%. Fair enough. But that value is nothing but consensus, as is the case with paper money. There is no underlying uncontestable value, like the uncontestable value of your house being able to house you.
Surely, there are asset classes where it would be more stupid to be invested in today, like bonds or bank deposits, but don’t underestimate that gold is of no use in a stricter sense. And as is the case with all useless things, you can not rent it out to somebody who wants to use it and get some rent for it, as would by the case for a house, a car, farmland or, last not least, money.

If you really look for intrinsic value, consider farmland, not that you will be the first to do so, prices rose substantially everywhere, but there is no other asset as limited and irreplaceable.

I earn my money selling that