There is a lot of interest in "Locavesting" a term coined by, Amy Corteee, who used it for the title of her book: Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From It. I've gained a lot of insight from her book and recommend it strongly. Check out her blog too, http://locavesting.blogspot.com/
Because of my own focus on farm and food, I've followed the convergence of local investing and farmland with great interest.
Right now, a lot of the argument for investing in local food to me sounds like the China market arguments of the 1890s. That business case exposition went something like this, but there are so many Chinese people, if we just get one of them to buy an aspirin, then we will all be rich... Ah yes, but what if we don't? As J Paul Getty observed, beginning investors worry about how to get their money in, but experienced investors worry first about how to get their money out...
It would seem to me the saving comfort of investing in local and organic food would be to structure the deals, so they have farmland in them. As such, even if the food deal takes awhile to go somewhere, the investor is still investing in the oh so real and tangible asset class of "black dirt/farmland" as opposed to the oh so tenuousness of "blue sky/demographically interesting concepts". Obviously, some companies do just fine wihout farmland, and some farms manage to fail with an abuance of real estate riches... But the real question is which way do you want to bet?
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