AcreTrader Connects Farmer Needs, Investor Interest

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Farmland values may not be skyrocketing like they were a few short years ago, but they are still far beyond the economics of farming. So when an opportunity comes along to operate more farmland, many farmers need a capital partner. Rob Moore, says that’s what they’re offering at AcreTrader: a trustworthy capital partner for farmers and gateway for investors wanting to add farmland to their portfolios.

Moore… “ We're out working with farmers that say, ‘Hey, there's a piece of property.’ Sometimes this is a sale-leaseback, sometimes this is a landlord that is selling out from under them. Sometimes this is a lot of intergenerational land transfer. So, you know, let's say, a set of parents are retiring. One of their children is taking over. They need to sell some of that ground, right? Farming doesn't come with retirement. So they say, ‘Okay, we need to sell 5% of our acreage to provide some capital to us.’ We do a lot of sale-leasebacks with purchase options directly to the operators. So any time a farmer is looking for a capital partner, we believe we're a good option because we feel like we take a very realistic approach to the investor class. This is a long-term, illiquid, high single-digit asset class. So we're trying to bring that bar of access to the asset class down for investors and bring that bar of access to farmers down to institutional capital.”

That’s Rob Moore, general manager at AcreTrader