Three ways to profit from food production

As the world's population rises, demand for food and farmland is going to keep on growing, says Merryn Somerset Webb. That means more opportunities for investors. Here, she tips three ways to profit.

If you are a struggling UK farmer, what do you wish for? A decade ago, it might have been more subsidies. A few years ago, perhaps it was planning permission for a housing estate. Now, it is pretty clear that the farmer's financial dream should be a wind farm.

Get approached by an operator hoping to use your land, and you can find yourself earning a fortune: a token sum while the thing is being put up, and then anything from £10,000 to £20,000-plus a year once the blades are turning. Put that against the average net farm income of around £20,000 in 2006-7 and you see the attraction.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.