Agro: from the field to the table

MIG’s Agro vertical is not a portfolio of farms. It is an operating chain: we finance the farmer, manage the harvest, run the processing, and control the offtake. Where most agricultural investors own one link and depend on everyone else, MIG holds the chain end to end — upstream, where the crop is grown, and downstream, where it is sold. That is what vertical integration means in practice, and it is the reason our agricultural credit performs.

What we grow and trade.

Four commodities: rice, corn, soya and sugar. Rice is our deepest position — long-term leased rice fields, milling and the bulk trade that follows. Sugar is our oldest: MIG has been in the physical sugar market since its early years, shipping several vessels of 15,000 to 50,000 metric tonnes of sugar regularly through the year — and rice and other grains alongside — and today holds sugar-cane plantations and allocations whose refinancing is part of our offtake of the fields we have already invested in. We do not own sugar mills; we manage the relationship between the field, the mill and the market, and we finance it. Corn and soya follow the same model: field, harvest, storage, offtake.

How the chain works.

It starts with the farmer. MIG provides crop financing against the harvest, so the farmer has inputs and working capital without selling forward at a discount to a trader. At harvest MIG manages collection, storage and quality. Processing is where value is made: MIG manages rice mills under quota and sugar-mill relationships, and in Thailand our participated company runs a plantation and a snack factory that takes the crop all the way to the retail shelf. Then the offtake — bulk for rice, corn and soya; branded product for snacks — contracted before the crop is planted wherever possible, so the revenue that services the financing is known before the risk is taken.

Why integration matters for credit.

A lender to a single link in the chain is exposed to every other link it does not control: the farmer who sells elsewhere, the mill that stops, the buyer who walks. By holding the chain, MIG turns a series of counterparty risks into one operating risk it manages itself. That is what makes agricultural cash flows bankable — and what allows them, in the right structure, to be financed through the MIGCorp Bond™ against contracted offtake.

Where we operate.

Thailand, Brazil and Southern Africa are the core; the model travels wherever there is arable land, a reliable harvest and a buyer who will contract. Greenhouse production is the newest line — controlled-environment growing for markets where field agriculture is water- or climate-constrained, financed on the same principles.

What we look for.

Sponsors with land rights and agronomic track record; crops with an established physical market; the ability to contract offtake; and a willingness to work inside an integrated chain rather than sell at the farm gate. In return MIG brings financing from planting to shipment, operating management where it is needed, and the market access that comes from having traded these commodities for more than a decade.