Harvard's nutty idea: Cracking into the almond market

Almonds are shaping up to be a more lucrative endeavor for pension funds, endowments and other institutions with very long-term investment horizons

In the Australian state of New South Wales, Harvard University is developing around 1,480 acres of former potato fields and other farmland, building a new dam and planting trees that will take about three years to bear their first edible crops.

It is part of a growing bet on almonds by the college’s endowment, which is adding to around 1,235 acres of almond plantations it already owns near a township called Hillston. Hundreds of miles away, Harvard is trying to sell an Australian sugar-cane plantation that it bought in 2016 and recently disposed of a dairy farm in New Zealand.

Almonds are