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How To Invest In Farmland, With David Chan

41m 13s

How To Invest In Farmland, With David Chan

The podcast explores farmland as an alternative investment within private equity real estate, featuring David Chan from Farm Together. Farmland is highlighted for capital preservation and inflation hedging, with historical data showing only two negative quarters since 1991, outperforming mainstream assets during downturns. Its resilience stems from dual income streams (income and appreciation) and strong fundamentals: rising global demand for food and fiber, coupled with decreasing U.S. farmland acreage (losing twice the size of Massachusetts between 2004 and 2017). Unlike volatile commodity prices, farmland valuations are stable due to infrequent transactions and long-term ownership. Investment structures vary: lease deals yield stable returns (cap rates 4.5%–6.5%) with minimal market risk, while direct operating structures target higher yields (cash yields 8%–9%, IRRs up to 15%) but involve more volatility from crop prices and weather. The U.S. farmland market is fragmented, with most farms valued between $2 million and $20 million, creating challenges for large institutions seeking to deploy substantial capital. This gap has allowed platforms like Farm Together to offer access to family offices and high-net-worth investors, enabling tailored risk-return profiles. Overall, farmland is presented as a resilient, inflation-linked asset with strong long-term prospects due to demographic and supply trends.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] You're listening to the Alternative Investment podcast. We give you the insights and strategies you need to grow your wealth with alternative investments. Now, here's your host, Andy Hagenz. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the show. I'm Andy Hagenz. And today we're talking about a very special asset class within the world of private equity real estate farmland. I drive by farmland every single day on my daily commute. And it really is an asset that the world's billionaires and most sophisticated investors are investing in heavily. So I think it's something that family offices that high net worth investors need to be looking into. Joining me today is David Chan, who is chief client officer at Farm Together. David, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Andy. Good. Great to be here. Do you agree with my lead, David? I mean, that was a little bit of editorializing. But I've seen it in the headlines, billionaires buying up farmland. They've been doing it for years. I don't know if I would stake my wagon on everything billionaires do. They can be an effective branch. But I would say that I think farmland is an excellent asset class for capital preservation. It's an excellent asset class as an inflation hedge. It's an uncorrelated asset class to many of the mainstream asset classes like public equities and fixed income. So particularly in today's economic environment where I would just personally define it as an uncertain one, I think a asset class like farmland with many of these qualities is particularly attractive. So you know, you kind of alluded to this capital preservation. And that's a phrase I've said on this program. I've heard that phrase more in the past 12 months than I had in the previous 12 years. And we also have family offices on the show. And that's a big theme for families. How does farmland perform in a recession? I mean, I'm not saying we're in a recession right now. It's kind of a jekyll and hide thing. But it seems like a lot of investors are almost presuming that we are, you know, the bull market, notwithstanding. So is farmland held up historically speaking during recession or contraction periods? Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. And I think it's funny because I've heard many people say that they're not saying we're in a recession right now, but I'm also not here again, and say we're not in a recession. Exactly, exactly. You know, I think the way I look at capital preservation, there's lots of different things to factor of course. Real returns versus nominal, you know, the basics and whatnot. But I think the simplest way if you want to do across asset class comparison is looking at draw downs. It's something that applies to every single asset class. And so, you know, when we look at public equities, when we look at fixed income public equities in 0.22, we're down, I think S&P 500 was down roughly 17%. Fixed income, the Barclays bond aggregate, I think was down 14%. So we saw meaningful draw downs across many of the mainstream asset classes in what was arguably a very tumultuous year, but draw downs nonetheless. When we look at farmland, our benchmark for farmland is the MayCREF farmland index NFI. The MayCREF is a real asset data provider that compares institutional returns for various real asset classes. So real estate farmland, Timberland would be some of the different benchmarks that may creep measures. When we look at NFI, the farmland index undernate creep, we have data going all the way back to 1991, quarterly data. So, you know, roughly 32 years or 313 years of quarterly data available. Do you want to take a guess how many quarters saw draw down in farmland from 1991 to today? - Oh, that's dangerous territory. You better just tell me, so I don't embarrass myself, David. - Two. - Two quarters? - Wow. - Two quarters, two quarters. The most recent one being, it was Q1, I believe, with 2022. - Okay. - But all in all two out of 128, 130 quarters were negative and there would be vast majority of our positive. So that's one way that I consider farmland and I think we can stand by a statement like it's a solid asset class for capital preservation. One, because there's two income streams, it is a real asset. So it has that same mechanical profile as a real estate investment. You have your income from either rental income or operating income and then you have your appreciation. So you have two income streams that the investment can produce and you're in an industry agriculture that is so closely tied to CPI and inflation. When you think about what agricultural products are used for, it's not just food or feed. Fiber is such a big part of it. Probably most of the things that are sitting around your desk right now have some corn or soy used to produce them. So agricultural products are consumed and utilized by us as consumers in so many ways, beyond just food and feed and fuel. So I think it is the ultimate inflation hedge because of that. And so you have this dual return stream asset class that mirrors inflation because of the nature and virtue of how agricultural products are used and is an asset class that has really strong fundamentals because of the market that we're in right now. We are a commodity market. We are dictated by supply and demand. On the demand side and aggregate, we have a growing global population. We have a rising middle class in many parts of the world that are demanding higher caloric diets and more complex diets that are putting a bigger demand on more nutritious and frankly more expensive commodities like meat and alternative proteins like tree nuts. Couple that with supply in the US at least. Farmland is way down in terms of number of acres that are being used to produce agricultural commodities. Since I think 2004 to 2017 about a 13 year period, this is the census that we saw, the latest census from the USDA. We've lost about twice the size of the state of Massachusetts in terms of area of land that was previously used for farmland. So if you're from a Western state, Massachusetts isn't incredibly big, but if you're from New York like myself, thinking about losing not one, but two Massachusetts worth of farmland is meaningful. So we have increasing demand, decreasing supply for an asset that is basically ingrained and intertwined in so many different parts of the economy. It makes for a very resilient asset class. And so that's why we see almost every single quarter of the make free farmland index being a positive one. Despite going through periods of tumultuous economic times, that period would have included the.com bubble 9/11, the great financial crisis. The Russian grain embargo was more of an agricultural issue than a broader market issue, but one that hit our asset class, that was between 2012 and 2014. And then of course, Copen. So no shortage of blacks won events. - Yeah, farmland reminds me of multi-family perennial favorite sector on the show. Obviously a favorite sector for family offices for high-nourished investors. You know, in the saying is everybody needs a roof over their head. And then there's an underlying supply and demand imbalance that sort of underpins that market with strong fundamentals. If I'm applying that same mindset to farmland, I'm saying well, everybody needs a roof over their head. And everybody's got to eat, right? So as you pointed out, globally, there's just a demand for more nutritious foods, probably more calorie dense foods, just essentially we need more food, especially because the world population is still growing. One thing that kind of surprises me though, back to the point that there were only two negative quarters of growth, commodities, depending on the commodity, I'm not a commodities expert, but my impression is that they're pretty volatile in terms of pricing. Compared to multi-family where rents, rent moves 7% in a year, that's not a boring year, right? Whether it move up or down 7%, that's an interesting year. Whereas with commodity, if a commodity moves up or down 7%, it's kind of like, does anybody even notice? I mean, I know people notice, but there's much more fluctuation and price swings in a lot of these crops. So I'm just sort of surprised why doesn't that move the price of the farmland asset? Is it because buyers and sellers kind of know that that's a short-term fluctuation and the pricing is more based on long-rower? Could you explain that dynamic to me? Absolutely. I do think that that asset values for farmland tend to be more, I would say less sensitive to short-term commodity prices. So if my prices go up 20%, your land's not worth 20% more that year and vice versa. So that's certainly one aspect of it. I think another aspect is the index assumes and covers a broad range of commodities and geographies. And so when we're thinking about farmland and maybe the same as if you're thinking real estate investments, if you just pick one particular market or one segment, if you're only judging real estate performance by performance of commercial real estate in San Francisco, that's not gonna be a pretty number or at least historically short term. If you open that up to other markets, you open that up to potentially multi-family or other segments as well, obviously the values will be different. And so for us, I think a big part of it is the resilience and I'd say lagging nature of asset valuations. They're not extremely sensitive or responsive to commodity prices because frankly, land does not change hands very often. It certainly does not change hands every single year. So there's this implicit understanding that most landowners are going to be owning farmland for at least a couple of years if not a couple of decades. So that's one, I think underpinning tenant behind all of this, but the other being that we're talking multiple geographies, multiple commodities. If one particular commodity is down in your portfolio, another could be up. And that's the benefit of diversification, of course. So that holds true whether you're investing in farmland or public equities or whatever it may be. So I think that's probably why the drawdown figure is as small as it is. While we do see my price fluctuation, generally speaking asset valuation has been to the Northeast meaning up and to the right, but at a very gradual case. The other thing I'd mention there is also a deals structure is one way that investors can consider, based on their risk appetite and what their fertile rate is, what type of exposure they're looking for in their farmland investments. So we have deals that are leases where our cash yield is derived from either entirely rental income or mainly rental income. So we don't have much market risk. Obviously we have counter-party risk with whoever we're leasing to, but we don't have market risk in that if my prices and yields are up, we get that upside, if they're down, we get that downside. On the flip side, we have other structures, which are called direct operating structures where our cash yield is derived from operating. And so here we're paying a third party operating partner to provide the farming management services and that encompasses the labor expertise, technology equipment needed to actually farm our properties. So we pay a flat service fee for that work and in exchange, we are owners of the income stream of the actual operating income from the property. So in that case, if yields and supply prices are up, we enjoy all that upside, if they're down, we eat that downside. That's where you would certainly see the most volatility in at least year to year returns because obviously you're dealing with a little bit more choppiness in commodity prices and commodity yields. We didn't even touch yield yet, but weather events, disease tests can either boost yields or depress yields. So that's another factor. But the way we structure deals can be altered, based on investor preferences. So for an investor who's looking for a higher yield, we have that option to be able to capture all that upside for investors who would rather limit their upside. But limit their upside in order to capture downside, at least on the same point, they can lease the property out, depend on that base rent for the income and still enjoy the appreciation of the underlying asset. - Understood. Well, all this talk about yield, and this is probably gonna be a hard question to answer, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, 'cause I know income investing is so so popular, we've seen private credits come into the limelight, seems to be getting increasing interest from family offices from high-neighborath investors, just those higher yields. I always like to say income never goes out of style, income investing never really goes out of style. So understanding that there's gonna be wild fluctuations depending on the crop and yield and all that, is the income stream, is there a range you could give? Is like a potential LP, what sort of range of income streams or yield would you possibly be looking at if you're investing in farmland? And is it the return more weighted towards the capital appreciation? But it's like, you know, you still enjoy some yield or is a vice versa, it's mainly an income investment. - So it is a tough question to answer because there's so many different types of deals and particularly that latter question on whether or not it's the overall performance of the investment is more tied to the capital appreciation versus income. That's gonna depend on whether or not we're looking at a development property where I would say the most of the value in that property is in fact in the capital appreciation. We're deferring income for the first three to possibly five years because we're developing a property meaning we're recycling old trees, planting new trees with planting new vines and we are dealing with biology. These are biological assets. So we can't as much as we'd like to, we can't speed up the growth rate of those trees or vines. We have to wait three, four, five years for them. - So David, is that like comparable to like value add or is that that almost sounds like new construction? You know, like in. - Yeah, certainly. Value add would be how we think about it. - Okay. And so, you know, the yields there, the returns are expected to be much higher. mature cash yields once the property is developed. We typically right now are looking at high single digits. So eight percent, nine percent cash yields net. And IRRs for those types of properties would be typically at least 11 percent could reach as high as 15 percent net IRR. So those would be the highest, the highest yield. Other structures where maybe we're buying a turnkey property. If we're buying a turnkey property, we're obviously paying more today than we would for, you know, for a property where it's just barely in value. Here we have barely in value plus the present value of the trees on the property and that present value is going to be meaningful if those trees are producing healthy income. So the capital appreciation in that instance would not be as big of a role or play as big of a role in the overall underwriting and performance of the investment. The income would be playing a more meaningful role. And for those types of properties, we're typically looking at, I would say expected cash yields of around 6 percent net, maybe 7 percent net. We also have again, the least structures where we could at least to attend and if we don't want to deal with the operating risk. And on leases we're seeing cap rates, I would say range from, or in a half to probably 6 and a half percent in today's market. So, you know, it is variable depends on investor preferences, risk, suitability, goals. But I think that's also the beauty of our space. We are able to tailor and customize all these different return profiles for very different investors. Someone who is investing on behalf of maybe their children who have a, you know, maybe a 50 year old period in mind is going to be looking for different investment criteria and have different objectives than maybe an upcoming retiree where the income may be a more important factor. - Absolutely. Now, I know farm together, you know, you're a big name in this space of, you know, retail access, you know, family office access to farmland, you know, as limited partners. But I actually want to, if we could, not only go back to the beginning of farm together, but even prior to that, you know, historically, how have investors access this asset class? I mean, I remember reading a Meb Favours book about, you know, the Yale Endowment Fund and the IB Portfolio and all that. And that was kind of my impression, you know, back to, back to the lead of this episode, even, you know, big money, you know, institutional investors, able to buy this stuff up at scale and then on the other end of the spectrum, you have mom and pops, right? With the 40 acre, 80 acre, 120 acre, whatever, family farm. It has that really changed, you know, or take us back, I guess, before farm together. What was the lay of the landscape from the perspective of an LP or a family office? - Sure. It's interesting. In some ways, much has changed, but others not much has changed. So I would say, you know, what has not changed is, the makeup and composition of the US Farglade market. I think we can start there. So I think there is a notion, I've seen so many different articles talking about industrialized farming in the United States and big scale farms and all that. And I understand the vantage point, but if you really want to see industrial farming, go down to Brazil. There farms have runways on the farms where you can land plains to deliver and receive product. That would be an industrial farm. The United States does not have many industry home farms. We have smaller farms and it's because of our history. If you look at US history and the legacy of certain pieces of law, like the Homestead Act, we deliberately sown out and cut out pieces of land to be small homesteads, economic producing homesteads that could be formed for families. And obviously, US history is much more complicated than that, but that is the DNA, that is the premise of lot sizes and acre parcels and basically what we're working with today when we look at supply. We don't have many farms that are on the market or come up for sale that are $100 million farms or $75 million farms. If we're looking at real estate and luxury real estate, no one blinks at a $75 million property, there's plenty of them. It's not a unicorn, it's nothing special. In the US, $75 million farm coming up to market is very special. There are not many of them. So that being said, when you look at capital outcators and many of these pensions and endowments that have mandates to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars into a strategy, how do you do that efficiently? If there are only so many $75 million properties available, it's tough and it's competitive. And that's, there is a cadre of allocators and large pensions and endowments who compete in the space and they all compete or tend to compete on those same larger properties. And it is competitive because everyone's trying to move big amounts of capital in a space where the supply doesn't really support that thesis. On the flip side, there are lots of individuals be it neighbors or other, I consider neighbors to be strategics who want to maybe expand their existing footprint, their neighbor is selling their farm. If the J-Sid helps economies of scale, of course they're going to be interested in adding on that parcel. But they're constrained by capital. So they may be looking at smaller lot sizes and additions of maybe up to a million or so. But once you start to get north of that, it becomes less and less likely for an individual to take down a parcel on the room. And it leaves us with this valley and supply of farms that are around $2 million to up to say $20 million in value. That the existing pensions and endowments who are in the space who have big mandates to move hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't really move the needle for them. Some of them actually, many of them have stated investment minimums where they can't consider a property that's smaller than say $20 million in value. So even if it's an A plus diamond property has amazing fundamentals, if it's $17 million, I'm sorry. We can't look at it. So that's the upper end of the valley, the lower end of the valley individuals who can't take down a $2 million deal because of capital limitations. That's where farm together is active. And what we're seeing is that our focus on making farmland more accessible to retail investors, to family offices, to register investment advisors, to smaller plan sponsors, smaller and medium sized endowments. This is a deal size range that is the sweet spot for many of those different investor groups. And there is lots of supply available and more supply coming to market over the next two decades as we see a generational transfer of ownership, which is already underway, materialized. So I think back to your question on what has changed, what hasn't, the supply fundamentals in the sense of our composition have not changed. We still have relatively small size farms in the United States. What is changing is that we have new competitors in the market who are able to construct and build products that are able to consider properties that are in that medium deal range value that before we're often forgotten and would either be sliced into lots of different smaller properties or aggregate into one bigger property. Now there's a focus on that value. And there's a middle market now. I mean, to basically what I'm hearing is mom and pop and then there is institutional when farm together is able to basically bundle together 20 or 50 or 100 LPs, then suddenly purchasing an $10 million, $16 million, whatever asset is very doable. I mean, it frankly even attractive, right? Because now if I'm a family smaller family office or a very high-knit worth investor, I can now directly be an LP and a particular asset, hopefully multiple assets to get some diversification. And it's in that sweet spot. I mean, my experience is in that institutional level, as you pointed out, you might have Yale, Harvard, and Bill Gates all bitten against each other. You know, in the multi-family world, and sometimes that means the cap rates get really, really compressed at the very high levels. And so sometimes there's even more, I would say value, or more attractive multiples in the middle market in some of these sectors. Is that the case in farmland? Is there a little, does your dollar stretch a little further buying the $15 million asset versus the $75 million asset? - It depends, we think so, but it depends how you define dollar. And obviously you have economies of scale on the larger properties, but what you may lose there, but what you gain, there's still certainly economies of scale on a $15 million farm, that massive economies of scale. But the bigger advantage is in the acquisition itself. I subscribe to the real state school thought that the most important part of the equation is the purchase price. So I am a believer of that. And we do not, we have not found ourselves yet in a situation where we were actively competing in a bidding war over a single property. We are often directly dealing with a seller and negotiating with a seller and not facing that auction environment that can lead to compressed cash yields and compressed cap rates. So we think that that is really critical. And I think institutional investors are almost forced to sometimes overpay because of the nature and the scarcity of properties that meet that size. And that is a limitation that they have to deal with. And it hurts on the capital appreciation side. It hurts quite a bit. So I think what you may lose in terms of some unit economics and scale of efficiency on a $15 million property versus say $75 million, you gain a lot back in the appreciation and potential appreciation and the fact that you're likely not in a bidding scenario for the acquisition of the property. I don't want to get in a bidding war with Bill Gates or for the Yale Endowment Fund. I'll say that. Well, I want to talk about your platform specifically, kind of the nuts and bolts. So I'm an accredited investor. Let's say, maybe I sold my business or whatever, had a liquidity event. I want to allocate a million bucks to all 100K at a time to different subs. So I may have 100,000 or 250,000 that I want to put into farmland. I go to farmtogether, is it farmtogether.com? What are my options? How do I sign up? How do I review deals? Is there a fund or are there individual offerings? Walk me through what I'll see as a perspective investor. - All the above. So we do have individual offerings. They are all biosexc regulation, de-exempt security offerings. So they're crowdfunded deals. We build a syndicate of investors, all who need to meet accreditation standards to invest in those single asset deals. And so if you, I'd say that's a good fit for anyone who wants to take the time to do diligence on each acquisition and basically have the ability to select which properties, geographies, commodities, return risk profiles they want to be a part of. The minimum dollar amount for those offerings is a $15,000 investment of one five. So if you were looking to invest, let's make it easy and say $150,000, you would be able to diversify that across 10 different single assets potential. Well, yeah, David, that's really, I mean, in my experience, most offerings that are credited investor only have that hundred thousand or fifty thousand dollar investment minimum. So 15 that actually is a big differentiator because now if I have a hundred hundred thousand dollars, I could actually potentially get a very diversified portfolio while still being able to select individual deals. So that to me that's so is are there multiple deals open at a time or do they kind of open and close one at a time. There can be multiple open at a time. We just had to simultaneously open. We've since filled the syndicate and closed one of the two. We currently have one one offering open, which is a citrus orchard in California. We expect that to be closing shortly. I think we've raised an 85% of the equity for that deal. And our next deal will likely be a peconder in Oklahoma just to give you a sense of the diversity here. So we're going from California to a so we try to target different geographies, different commodities. Again, for investors who are taking advantage of our lower minimum and creating a diversified basket or diverse five portfolio of different farmland investments. Now some investors, you know, that's ideal for them and they love having that ability and. I'd say independence of being able to select which properties they invest in other investors don't want to take the time to figure out which properties they want to invest in they you know, I hear things often like you know I'm paying you as the manager to find the farmland properties. I don't want to have to do that work. I don't know why I should be investing in almonds versus pistachios or whatnot. So I'm trusting you with that job and I want you to do that for me. And I understand that that perspective as well. So for investors who want a diversified option. That's basically auto diversified. They don't have to do that work on their own. We also have an open ended fund. So that's the farm together sustainability. I'm sorry, the farm together sustainable farmland fund. It's a product that's open ended. It's focused on sustainable farmland in the United States. Being that it's open ended, we can accept new capital on a quarterly basis. So there's no deadline or hard clothes on when we are raising capital. If an investor decides that they, you know, they expect to be selling their business in Q3. And so they expect to have a lot of cash deploying Q4. You know, they would have the option of waiting until Q4 to invest in our fund. So that's the beauty of the open ended nature of it. And that fund currently has holdings in Northern California, Southern California in Colorado. We'll be making a fourth acquisition in Q3 of this year in Oklahoma. And we expect to be making a fifth acquisition before year end, which would likely be in the Pacific Northwest. And we're invested in citrus pistachios, corn, soybeans, soon we'll have pecans and then likely hazelnuts or apples or pears in the Pacific Northwest. So already a pretty diversified basket of both commodities and geographies. We target a four to six percent net cash yield on the fund and an eight to 10 percent net IRR. And it is a, it is a fund. So whereas those single asset deals are structured as limited liability companies and investors have a fractional interest of ownership in the LLC. The fund is a GPLP structure. So investors would be admitted as limited partners to the fund. And we also have other options as well if investors want to either build their own private syndicate of investment partners that they like to work with to own an asset on their own or if they want to own an asset entirely on their own. We have a product called bespoke, which are effectively separately managed accounts where we'll source an underwrite and manage a family investment property on behalf of either one or a small group of investors. And then the final product I'll mention, which is one that I'm very excited about because I think I think there's so much. Appetite for other 1031 alternatives in the real state world would be our tenancies and common or tick deals and our tick deals are 1031 exchange eligible. So investors who do have 1031 exchange proceeds would be able to exchange into one of these deals as a replacement property for their relinquished property and enjoy those potential tax savings. And and the minimum for those other products that I mentioned are fund minimum is $100,000. bespoke is the highest minimum of course because they're outright buying a property. So that's typically around a $3 million minimum and then the 10 and seeing commoner tick deal minimum is generally around $500,000. Understood. Yeah, that's a lot of different options and it you know, I think increasingly. Every family office is different, every high net worth investor is different, even every advisor is different, you know, they're looking for different things. So I respect the diversity of product offering. And David were almost out of time, but I hit one more question. You know, you mentioned the tick, the 1031 exchange eligible product. But to zoom out, you know, we on this show, we talk a lot about multi family and you know, 1031s, DSTs, all these all these different tax advantage forms of investing, you know, in real estate with like multi family. Even if you're not doing a 1031, there are other tax advantages, right, pass through depreciation. You know, all kinds of different things in the tax code are there intrinsic advantages like that in some of these farmland offerings where it's a tax advantage investment, even even putting aside the 1031, which I know that in and of itself is very attractive. But other other tax benefits to investing in farmland. Yes. So I think I'd be I'd be slapped on the rest of my insight, the company line, which is we can't give tax advice, but that being said, there are certainly potential tax benefits inherent to farmland investments that you've that real estate investors probably would would be familiar with because they apply to farmland as they apply to real estate. And I would say probably the most common that I think is used in real estate that we see in farmland as well would be the concept of bonus depreciation. And being able to depreciate 100% of all capitalized expenses in the year, which they're incurred at the federal level state is different, but at least at the federal level, you can can record 100% in the year, which those expenses are incurred under bonus depreciation rules. So we do we do utilize that in our deals often as well and any depreciation benefits do flow through a pass through to the investor on their schedule came on. So that would be reflected as effectively in that operating loss and then that investor may be able to either use that and operating loss to either offset current for future income in that investment. Or if they have other tax liabilities elsewhere in their portfolio, they may be able to use that to offset those liabilities understood. Yeah. And you know, again, the ability to 1031 that's we have so many listeners and viewers of the show who are do 1030, you know, they all their real estate transactions are actually 1031. So I think that's very attractive when platforms allow you to 1031 into the platform because it really it opens it opens you up to so much more capital right because And I think to the 1031 investor were I hope a breath of fresh air where we're much differentiated offering. You know, when I am considering 1031s or helping friends look at 1031s, you know, I think they all look very similar to one another, the options. You know, the risk profiles returns it. It's all, you know, an apartment building in one summer. It certainly has its own unique characteristics, but it's not that different than an apartment building in another summer. Better or worse, right? I mean, yeah, far land is obviously different. So we are very different offering a very different asset class within real estate. And and it's all considered like kind. So if you're relinquished properties of gasoline station and Plano, Texas, you would still be able to likely exchange into a wine grape vineyard in Oregon. That's considered a real asset to a real asset. So it's like kind. So I think offering that differentiation is something that I'm excited about and something that, you know, the tip product for us is not new. We've we've now been, I think, offering to expert about it two years, but newer and I think, you know, especially in today's real estate market where there is a lot of activity and we are seeing 1031 volume increase. Happy gold terms outside of traditional commercial or multi-family is certainly a positive 100% I mean, that's one of the biggest. You know, reasons that alt are so popular is their ability to diversify portfolio. So even within that alternatives allocation that power to diversify very, very popular, very important. And I think, you know, when we talk about alternative investments on this show, we cover a lot of different things. We cover private credit, private equity, but real estate is the 800 pound gorilla, right? So it's cool. It's fun for me to dive into some of these little sectors that I'm not as familiar with that I know some of our audience probably is not as familiar with. And that being said, David, where can our audience of high-not worth investors and family offices go to learn more about farm together and all of your offerings or websites. definitely the best place to start farmtogether.com. And then additionally, I would just offer if anyone has specific questions either on farmland as an asset class or farm together. Please feel welcome to reach out to me as well. My email is David at FarmTogether.com. - Awesome. David, thanks again for joining the show today. - Thank you Andy, it was great to be here. (upbeat music) - That's it for today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review to help spread the word to other investors. And we'll be back soon with another episode. (upbeat music)

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Farmland is a strong asset class for capital preservation, inflation hedging, and portfolio diversification due to its low correlation with public equities and fixed income.
  2. Historical data shows farmland experienced only two negative quarters out of roughly 130 from 1991 to 2023, demonstrating resilience through major economic crises.
  3. The asset benefits from dual income streams (operating/rental income and appreciation) and strong supply-demand fundamentals: growing global population and middle class drive demand, while U.S. farmland acreage has declined significantly.
  4. Farmland valuations are less sensitive to short-term commodity price fluctuations due to infrequent land sales, long holding periods, and diversification across geographies and crops.
  5. Investment structures can be tailored
  6. Historically, large institutional investors faced challenges deploying capital due to the fragmented U.S. farmland market—most farms are small (under $20 million), creating a gap between small individual buyers and large pensions/endowments.

Summary:

The podcast explores farmland as an alternative investment within private equity real estate, featuring David Chan from Farm Together. Farmland is highlighted for capital preservation and inflation hedging, with historical data showing only two negative quarters since 1991, outperforming mainstream assets during downturns. S.

farmland acreage (losing twice the size of Massachusetts between 2004 and 2017). Unlike volatile commodity prices, farmland valuations are stable due to infrequent transactions and long-term ownership. 5%) with minimal market risk, while direct operating structures target higher yields (cash yields 8%–9%, IRRs up to 15%) but involve more volatility from crop prices and weather.

S. farmland market is fragmented, with most farms valued between $2 million and $20 million, creating challenges for large institutions seeking to deploy substantial capital. This gap has allowed platforms like Farm Together to offer access to family offices and high-net-worth investors, enabling tailored risk-return profiles.

Overall, farmland is presented as a resilient, inflation-linked asset with strong long-term prospects due to demographic and supply trends.

FAQs

Farmland is a private equity real estate asset class that offers capital preservation, inflation hedging, and low correlation to public equities and fixed income.

Historically, farmland has been resilient with only two negative quarters out of over 128 since 1991, including during the dot-com bubble, the Great Financial Crisis, and COVID-19.

Agricultural products are tied to CPI and used widely beyond food, such as in fiber and fuel, so farmland values and income streams tend to rise with inflation.

Farmland provides two income streams: rental or operating income and capital appreciation, with cash yields ranging from 4.5% to 9% net depending on the deal structure.

Deals can be structured as leases with stable rental income or direct operating arrangements where investors capture full upside and downside from commodity prices and yields.

Turnkey properties offer immediate income with lower appreciation potential, while development properties defer income for 3-5 years but target higher IRRs of 11-15% net.

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