Investing and Operating
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
As investor dollars pour into farmland, many take a more passive approach: owning the land and renting it out to tenants. But Gold Leaf Farming focuses on not only investing in farmland, but operating the farms themselves. Here’s Director of Asset Management Sawyer Clark.
Clark... " One of our values is to act like an owner. And like, we just, we say that we tell people, we believe it. And, and we've got to act like it. If we're acting like owners on our farms, that means when it's, you know, the alert goes off that it's going to frost at 3 am on a Sunday, we want our team to hustle out there. And to turn the irrigation on, not because if they don't, they get fired, but because they're invested in the farms and they take pride in it. And if we were kind of an absentee landlord or a contract farmer, or we hired contract farmers, that expectation, you know, maybe, I'm sure there are some great custom farmers who would do that and who have that pride, but we don't have as much ability to respond quickly. And the other thing is we, you know, we've got, like I said, 85ish people. What we're trying to do is, is find the best people pay them way better than average. And then do hard things to create more food with fewer resources and to generate good returns for our investment partners. So that means we actually want to fulfill that circle. We've got to be hiring and training and challenging and motivating and all those things."
Learn more about their business model at goldleaf.ag.
