The World's Hottest Real Estate Market
By Tom Dyson
March 3, 2008

I spent two days in Lucas do Rio Verde...

I took three tours of the town. I had dinner with the mayor's brother. I visited Latin America's largest meatpacking plant with a site manager. I inspected a 1,500-acre farm for sale. I walked beside a combine harvester as it munched soybeans... and then I got drunk with a group of local engineers.
 
Lucas is in the geographical center of South America. In the old days, politicians used to send their enemies out to this region to live in isolation. It was so far from civilization, they were never heard from again.
 
My dad advised me not to come here. He knows Brazil well. When I pointed out Lucas in the atlas, he told me I would find the true Wild West there. "You can't go there," he said. "It's not safe for tourists."
 
My dad was wrong. I've found a special town here. It's orderly. The schools are the best in the country. The hospitals are clean. The people are wealthy. There's 0% unemployment. A bicycle path runs through town with neat yellow stripes painted down the middle.

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The lowest pay available in Lucas is $500 per month. Some unskilled labor here earns $2,000 a month. The minimum wage in Brazil is $171 per month.
 
I would live in this town and raise a family. There's a strong sense of pride, community, and work ethic here... like I imagine they used to have in small-town America 100 years ago.

I went out to dinner with the mayor's brother. His name is Paulo Franz. Paulo and his brother are important businessmen in Lucas. They own a 25,000-acre farm.

They grow cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice. They are owners in the town's co-op, where farmers bring their grain at harvest. The co-op dries the grain and stores it.

The Franz brothers also own a chicken business, a beef business, a hog business, and a biodiesel business. Next, they want to produce milk. A magazine ranked the Franz brothers' company the 270th-largest company in Brazil.

Paulo is deliberate with his words. He is a serious man... and a long way from the political slimeballs I picture at the top of Brazilian companies. We sat outside drinking beers and eating pizza. A musician performed hits by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones in perfect English with a 10-foot movie screen behind him showing images of live concerts.

I could have been in Miami. No one smokes. They all carry the latest cell-phone models. My hotel is clean and modern. I have air conditioning in my room, and the Internet connection is faster than I have at home in Florida.
 
"When I came to this town 13 years ago," Paulo said, "there was no electricity or asphalt."
 
The town of Lucas is only 20 years old. Now, it is the fastest growing town in Brazil by population and the fourth-fastest growing town by inward investment. The population is 35,000. Soon it will be 50,000. They've already planned the town extension. My guide showed me the exact spot where the new main street will run. It was still a soybean field.
 
Twenty years ago, they gave the land away free here. Now arable land costs $2,000 an acre.

The Answer to the World's Coming Food Crisis Crisis Investing: U.S. Agriculture

"Four years ago," said Paulo, "I advised a friend from Illinois to buy some land as an investment. He paid $37,000. Now this land is worth $350,000."

Why is Lucas such a booming town? The answer is something you must understand to successfully invest in agriculture. I'll explain it in my next column...

Good investing,

Tom

P.S. Paulo and his brother hope to take their company public by the end of the year. I'll keep in contact with him and make sure DailyWealth readers know when they set the IPO date.