Eastern Bolivia Producing-Land Project
Buy titled frontier land in Santa Cruz, convert it into productive farms and pasture, and hold it through a re-rating already underway.
Commercial soybean, maize and cattle farming has already arrived in eastern Bolivia, but land prices have not caught up. Titled frontier land costs a fraction of mature farmland across the Brazilian border.
The plan: acquire four estates of about 5,000 hectares each, one a year, convert suitable hectares into cropland and pasture under permit, and operate them through to full production. Operations and development create the value. A market re-rating is the upside.
Led on the ground by Matias Bullrich, a former Morgan Stanley banker from an Argentine land and cattle family dating to 1867, with more than twenty years operating in the Chiquitanía.
A price gap, and a record of closing it
In 2006 Matias Bullrich paid $50 a hectare for his reference farm. The same kind of titled land trades near $800 today, while developed cropland in Mato Grosso, across the border, sells for $10,000 to $20,000. The project buys at the bottom of that gap and builds toward the top.
Development uplift
Undeveloped land bought near $800 a hectare becomes productive land worth $2,000 or more.
Operating yield
Cash from cattle breeding, soybeans and maize, run on a model benchmarked to a working farm.
Convergence
The upside: Chiquitanía land re-rating toward Brazilian values. It is not the foundation.
Why now
- Bolivia has reset. A new government, a $1.9 billion IMF program and a floating currency. Painful for the country, a tailwind for a farm that sells in dollars.
- No export tax on grain, a structural edge over Argentina.
- Brazilian capital is moving in. Foreign agribusiness already controls over one million hectares in Santa Cruz, and Mennonite colonies have developed over 200,000 hectares.
- A catalyst is under study. In July 2026 Bolivia and Mato Grosso agreed to study a border road corridor. It is upside, not a base-case dependency.
An asset that moves on its own
Farmland earns its place in a portfolio less for its headline return than for how little it moves with everything else. Over three decades, US institutional farmland has delivered equity-like returns at a fraction of the volatility, and it gained ground in 2022 when stocks and bonds fell together.
Different drivers. Returns come from crop and rent income plus the land itself, priced on food demand and farm margins rather than earnings multiples.
An inflation link. A 2025 University of Illinois study of 1970–2024 data found farmland returns positively correlated with inflation and largely uncorrelated or negatively correlated with equities, with the inflation link strengthening over longer holds.
Institutional sizing. Nuveen research finds a 2–5% allocation to farmland and timberland can raise portfolio returns while lowering risk.
Where the cycle sits
- Grain near the bottom. Corn, soybean and wheat prices sit below their ten-year averages after falling from the 2022 peaks, and many growers have run at or below breakeven for two to three years.
- Prices turning up. USDA’s October 2026 outlook puts 2026/27 soybeans at $12.00 a bushel, up from about $10.00. The project’s base case uses $400 a tonne, about $10.90 a bushel, below USDA’s forecast.
- Cattle supply is tight. The US beef cow herd is the smallest on record and the 2026 calf crop the smallest ever. Heifer retention has only just begun, so rebuilding will take years.
Sources: NCREIF Farmland Index; University of Illinois farmdoc (2025); Nuveen; FAPRI 2026 Outlook; USDA WASDE, 9 October 2026; USDA Cattle Inventory, January and July 2026; World Bank and AMIS fertilizer data, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Brazil’s capital is moving west
Brazil is the world’s soy superpower, and its farmland has re-rated accordingly. Foreign buyers are now tightly restricted from owning it, and Brazil’s own leading farmers are buying across the border in the Chiquitanía.
Productive land in the Chiquitanía is among the cheapest anywhere (US$ per hectare, log scale)
Gold: Bolivia (this project). Dark green: Brazil, Mato Grosso. Mid green: row crop / arable. Pale: pasture / grazing. Mato Grosso is the midpoint of a $10,000–20,000 range for prime cropland. Bolivia’s developed target is the project base case. Australia is an all-land median. Zambia is a single developed-farm transaction including buildings. FX: R$1 = $0.19, €1 = $1.15, A$1 = $0.65, R1 = $0.056, C$1 = $0.72.
- The world’s soy leader. Brazil is on course for 42.2% of global soybean output in 2025/26 and 59.2% of world exports, up from about 30% of output a decade ago.
- The door is closed. On 23 April 2026 Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously upheld limits on foreign and foreign-controlled buyers of rural land under Law 5,709/1971.
- Brazilians are crossing. Eraí Maggi of Bom Futuro reportedly holds 30,000–40,000 ha in the Chiquitanía. Grupo Mônica holds about 100,000 ha in Bolivia, and Riza is developing 22,000 ha.
Sources: USDA NASS Land Values 2026; FCC Farmland Values 2025; Eurostat 2024; Ray White, Q1 2026; Scot Consultoria 2026; Bolsa de Comercio de Rosario, 2026; MGAP-DIEA 2025; Elsenburg, 2025; S&P Global; Mayer Brown, April 2026; AgFeed, 2026.
It already worked, with the same operator
This is not a bet that land in this region can re-rate. It already has. Every cost and yield in the model traces to a farm that runs today.
The operator: Matias Bullrich
Founder and CEO of Verde21. Eleven years at Morgan Stanley in high-yield capital markets, then co-founder of Arx Investment Management and portfolio manager at SAC and Cheyne. Stanford engineering graduate. The Bullrich family has been in Argentine land and cattle since 1867. More than twenty years operating in the Chiquitanía.
How the estates are built
- Buy one estate of about 5,000 ha a year for four years, each with final title (título ejecutorial) in hand.
- Convert about 1,000 ha a year on each estate under permit, to roughly 4,000 productive hectares per estate.
- Split about half cattle pasture, half cropland, so the herd lives on crop residue in the dry season.
- Satellite baselines and re-imaging for reporting.
The base case is deliberately conservative
- 3.0 t/ha soybean yield, below the operator’s own target, priced at $400 a tonne.
- 5.5 t/ha maize yield, with no change in price assumed.
- 2.5% a year cattle price appreciation.
Built on clean title and good governance
- Governance by law, not by choice. Independent directors, an audit committee, related-party rules, quarterly reporting and audited annual statements.
- Clean title and productive use are the primary safeguards against expropriation risk, which in Bolivia targets idle or improperly titled land.
- Dollar-earning. Grain and cattle sell in dollars, and offshore dollar revenue is largely insulated from Bolivia’s domestic dollar shortage.
More than a farm
- 20% conservation commitment
- On-site eco-lodge
- Additional revenue streams under review
We would welcome the chance to walk you through the project.
Contact usField Marshal Group Ltd is a UK company. This page is for information only. It is not an offer of securities or an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity. Figures derive from the project model and published sources and are not guarantees.