Matias Guajardo Marchant is a Portfolio Manager Farmland at Toesca Asset Management in Santiago. He is an Agronomist with a career fully dedicated to agriculture, firmly believing that this sector is one of the fundamental pillars of both the Chilean and global economy. He is a mentor with Startup Chile and has held a series of financial roles throughout his career.

Our discussion dives into the nature of agriculture as an asset class and the potential to structure investments in high-value, sustainable agriculture for institutional investors. Matias describes the favorable political and economic backdrop to this strategy in Chile today where the economy is open and there are numerous trade agreements in effect.

We discuss the wave of focus on sustainability and how this can enhance the return for investors as well as how the sustainability impacts are measured. Finally we reflect on some of the learnings that he has internalized over the course of his career – including, memorably, the notion that if you look after the small money, the big money will look after itself as well as the importance of patience, long term thinking, and strategic planning.

This podcast is appearing as our penultimate episode in our special Latin American voices focus series.