Audited results show that the net turnover of Lande Finance, the largest platform for investment in agricultural projects in the Baltics, grew over the year by a record 22% – from 1.61 million euros in 2023 to 1,962,314 euros in 2024.
“Paradoxically, this growth and this support for our farmers became possible thanks to investors from Germany and Central Europe. There are only 127 investors from Latvia (~1.6%). It works out rather curiously – the Germans believe in our agriculture, but we ourselves do not,” comments Nikita Gončars, founder of Lande Finance.
In 2022 (currently the most recent data available for the EU as a whole), farms in Europe, especially smaller ones, were short of 38.4 billion euros in total. These farms more often face refusals from banks and are therefore forced to look for alternative sources of funding.
This is explained by the fact that farmers' incomes, both in the EU as a whole and in Latvia, are comparatively low. For example, almost 40% of farms have an annual turnover of less than 25,000 euros. The majority (75%) are small businesses.[1] Roughly a third of farmers have wanted to obtain financing, but not all of them secured bank loans, so they are now looking for alternatives.[2] The financing gap as a percentage of gross value added reaches 89% in Romania and 79% in Lithuania, while in Latvia, where Lande has its head office,– 18%
Last year (2024), 457 projects worth 12 million euros were financed on the Lande platform. The average loan that farmers raise through the platform comes to 24,500 euros. The amounts vary widely, however, ranging from a few thousand up to 150,000 euros.
“We work on the principle of ‘people to people’, that is, we let those who have funds invest in agricultural projects that need financing. We do not lend anything ourselves. It is a very straightforward model – farmers pledge their land (47%), machinery (34%) and harvest (19%) and receive funds. Investors, in turn, get the chance to earn, investing from as little as 50 euros and, importantly, at an average of 11% a year. Over the whole time Lande has been operating, investors have earned three million euros. Audited results show that in 2024 the figure was 1.2 million euros,” explains N. Gončars.
Over five years of operation, the volume of financing issued exceeds 30 million euros, and more than 1,300 projects have been financed in total. This was possible mainly thanks to investors from Germany and Eastern Europe. “Latvian residents make up just one and a half percent of the investors, and that is a sad state of affairs. As a resident of Latvia, it matters to me that it should be Latvian residents who invest, through a Latvian platform, in Latvian farms that produce food for the people of our country, and who earn from doing so,” stresses the company's head.
The 2024 results show that the LANDE group's Latvian companies — SIA LANDE Platform (€122,632), AS Lande Corporate (€108,030) and SIA SF MGMT Collateral (€64,900) — paid 295,562 euros in taxes into the Latvian budget, thereby making their contribution to the development of the national economy.
About LANDE
The investment platform LANDE Finance has been operating since 2019 and specialises in arranging loans for farmers secured against land, harvests and agricultural machinery. The company is licensed by a decision of Latvia's financial and capital market supervisory authority (Latvijas Banka) and operates under that licence, with the right to provide crowdfunding services throughout the EU. The platform offers access to low-risk (LTV) investment opportunities and transparent financing for the agricultural sector. The company's head office is in Latvia. Since it began operating, LANDE has financed more than 1,300 agricultural projects in Latvia, Lithuania and Romania worth more than 30 million euros. At the end of 2024 the active loan portfolio reached almost 20 million euros, and the number of registered investors exceeded 8,000 people. Profits paid out to investors amounted to three million euros, and the average return on investment was 11% a year.