Ep #16: Redesigning Farmland Finance with Amanda Zakharov
What happens when real estate expertise meets a mission to transform farmland ownership for the better? In this episode of The Land Ledger, host Brian Kearney is joined by Amanda Zakharov, Director of Investment at Dirt Capital Partners, a fund focused on regenerative and organic farmland investing. Amanda shares her unique journey from commercial real estate into the world of agricultural finance, blending real estate expertise with a deep commitment to ecological stewardship and farmer equity.
Listen in as they explore Dirt Capital’s innovative approach to farmland ownership and access, offering 100% financing with long-term leases and fixed-price purchase options to help farmers build equity. Amanda details how the fund tailors deals to support best-in-class land stewards, the types of projects they finance, and how they prioritize impact over market-rate returns. She also explains how Dirt Capital actively supports farmers through the life of a project and partners with others in the regenerative ag space to expand access and opportunity. You’ll hear practical advice for farmers considering regenerative transitions, aspiring farmland investors, and young professionals exploring careers in the industry.
Listen to the Full Episode:
What You’ll Hear About in This Episode:
The types of deals and farmers Dirt Capital works with.
Advice for farmers considering a regenerative transition.
Amanda’s journey to agriculture-focused investing.
Dirt Capital’s unique business model.
How Dirt Capital offers financial feasibility for Midwest farmers.
Dirt Capital’s collaborations and unique projects.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“ We work with farmers on land access and security, and the way that we create that security is a little bit unique and creative.” - Amanda Zakharov
“ Our bar for ecological stewardship is fairly high, but we don't require specific certifications if it doesn't make sense for that business. But we are looking for best-in-class land stewards.” - Amanda Zakharov
“ We actively reach out, share information, partner with our peers, and kind of seek to build those relationships so that we're doing our best for the farmers. So if we're not the best fit, I wanna be able to tell you who the best fit is.” - Amanda Zakharov
Resources:
Amanda Zakharov: LinkedIn
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz
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Read the Transcript:
Amanda Zakharov: We're designing it so that hopefully the market value will be higher than the purchase option value. So when a farmer goes to buy it from us, the intention is for the market value to exceed what they have to purchase it. And wanna cap our own returns to our investors because we are very cognizant of the fact that every dollar that our investors get is a dollar that the farmers didn't get.
Welcome to The Land Ledger podcast, where investing in farmland meets the future of finance. I’m your host, Brian Kearney, here to guide you through the untapped potential of farmland as an asset.
Whether you’re already investing in farmland, want to invest in farmland, or you’re just curious about safe alternatives to stocks and bonds, this is your space to learn, explore, and be inspired.
Your journey to farmland investing starts now.
Brian Kearney: Welcome to the Land Ledger. Today, we have Amanda Zakharov on the show. Really excited to dive into your background, Amanda, a little bit about Dirt Capital. You guys are a really cool fund, and I'm excited to dive deeper on the show.
Amanda Zakharov: Thanks for having me, Brian. It's great to be talking to you today.
Brian Kearney: Perfect. So let's start with your background. How did you get into the farmland investing world?
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, it's a bit of a winding story. I started out in the commercial real estate world after school, and I did that for about six years, and really was interested in food systems and how to combine my experience investing in real estate with more social finance impact and agriculture.
So I went back to school to NYU and got my master's in food studies, which is a little bit of a different route. And throughout that time, I got to start my own business at Agritourism. I was consulting on projects. I invested some my own money in a few. And what I really learned is that I loved the agricultural investing part of it.
This was 12 years ago or so, and actually, Jacob Israel was just founding Dirt Capital at the time, so I knew him at the beginning, but then I was working on some projects that had a lot of similarities, but there was no full-time job for me at that time. It was really–
Brian Kearney: Yeah.
Amanda Zakharov: Very nacent industry. So I ended up going back to the commercial real estate world, working on an office investing platform, which you can imagine, with a pandemic that didn't go as well.
So timing was great, though. I got to stay in touch with Jacob over those years. And when he was getting ready to kind of bring the platform national in like 2022, I joined the team as the director of investments. Now I get to work with farmers every day.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. That's awesome. Tell me about that agritourism business. That's interesting.
Amanda Zakharov: Sure. Yeah. I used to bring, so I was in New York City at the time and people get kind of disconnected from their food and food system, so I took people from the city out to visit local farms and food producers. So we kind of make it like a fun, like both informational and fun experience, do some tastings. We do like a, we had one where we went out to Long Point, Long Island–to Blue Point and in Long Island and do oysters and beer and to go to a brewery.
Brian Kearney: Oh, that's awesome.
Amanda Zakharov: Fun stuff like that, yeah, I'm not much of an entrepreneur. I really enjoyed the investing side of it more.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Well, what happened? That's still–what gave you the idea to do that? Because you say you're not much of an entrepreneur, but that's like a kind of inherently entrepreneurial thing is building this outta nothing. So, tell me more about what initially got you that idea.
Amanda Zakharov: I didn't, it wasn't my idea. It was my friend's idea. I had the capacity to do it and was kind of–so we did it together for a while.
But she ended up moving to Ireland, and I ended up focusing on the investing side. So, yeah. I'm more of an execution–
Brian Kearney: There you go. And then for those early investments, what type of investments was it? Was it in production? Was it in adding things kind of like this? What did that look like early on?
Amanda Zakharov: I think my first personal investment was a honey company and then I invested in an ice cream company, organic ice cream. And then I realized I really liked the agricultural stuff. So I made investments in some community-based agricultural work where we had multiple farmers that were on one piece of land, sharing infrastructure equipment.
It's pretty complex. And then I also worked, did some investing in a fund that looked very much like dirt capital, but it was a volunteer-run, so we didn't manage to keep it going.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, okay. Okay. And then with Dirt Capital, what did those early conversations look like when you started wanting to dive in, maybe you were thinking about this or starting your own. Tell me about that when you were talking to the founder.
Amanda Zakharov: Oh, wow. When, well, thinking back to when Jacob started it, there were so many interesting projects going on, and as I mentioned, I was involved in a bunch, so I really was excited about what Jacob was doing and respected it.
I think what was the most exciting was staying in touch over those 10 years, watching some of the other projects not work out, and seeing the time, energy, effort that Jacob and the rest of the team put into building this, iterating, talking to farmers on the ground, figuring out the pieces that are important, what works, what doesn't.
So you know, having that history and seeing a lot of great exits and some not so great situations too, to say, “Okay, these are some lessons learned. This is how we can do better.” And I think that mentality and that we're always tweaking is what I really enjoy about working on a small team that's very nimble.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then what, for the audience, what does dirt capital do? What's its kind of unique twist on the fund space?
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, so I mean, I always say we work with farmers on land access and security, and the way that we create that security is a little bit unique and creative. So the main way that we get brought into transactions as frequently when something’s a little too complicated for other people, because we will get, we will customize things, we’ll try to figure it. The main tool that we use is actually a full purchase with a long-term lease that has fixed purchase options in it. So this is not your typical short-term lease. It's really, it's designed to build equity for the farmers and to create a feeling of ownership. We see ourselves as a temporary or transitional owner there.
The main reason we do it is that it allows us to provide a hundred percent of the capital, so farmers don't need a down payment coming to us. It also allows us to be a little more active on asset management. So we do stuff like conservation easements. We have some projects where we've integrated some renewable energy.
We have some projects where there's even, some parts that got sold off. Like we have a property outside of Bozeman, Montana, for example, that's very large property where the vast majority of it is gonna get conserved. But we are subdividing off a few lots to sell. Those will generate quite a bit of cash flow that make–and the rest of the property significantly more affordable. So we like to do funky stuff like that as well.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes sense. What does the typical, maybe there isn't a typical project if each one's this unique, but is it more like value add? Is it row crops? Is it permanent crops, vegetables, ranch? What's your kind of typical deal look like?
Amanda Zakharov: There really isn't one single typical; I'd say it falls into a handful of categories.
We have a, yeah, we definitely have organic row crop type of farmers that we've worked with. We have a pretty significant chunk of regenerative branches now. We also have a good number of smaller diversified vegetable farms, alot of ones that are serving a metro area, and in those cases in particular, we often end up doing financing a house.
As well. So. That may be kind of not just the farm park, but their full home and business all into one. And that is something we'll do on any transaction is include infrastructure if it's on the farmland.
Brian Kearney: Okay, that makes sense, which is in and of itself a difference.
Most funds will just cut that section out. Like you deal with that on your own. So that's interesting. When people are coming to you, and this is for the audience, so first off, you've focused kind of exclusively on regenerative and organic, right?
Amanda Zakharov: We do. Yes.
Brian Kearney: Perfect. So if someone is going through that process where they're trying to decide what steps they need to take to make that organic transition, is that something where you're helping at the outset, or is this typically already people who are organic, it's already been certified? What does that look like?
Amanda Zakharov: So, most often we're helping someone expand into additional land that already has done work on organic and regenerative practices.
So our bar for ecological stewardship is fairly high, but we don't require specific certifications if it doesn't make sense for that business. But we are looking for best in class land stewards. So it's already been proven on the ground and already done it, at least in some capacity, and this being typically an expansion on that.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Okay. And then a lot of the audiences kind of, you know, Midwest row crops, so talk about some of those best-in-class characteristics you'd be looking at for stewardship of that type of ground where you have row crop production.
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, I mean, it's so different whether you're in a really wet environment.
And dry land farming in the Highlands, so it can be no-till, it can be cover cropping, and some things kinda on top of organic certification. I'd say we don't, it doesn't need to be a lot of those practices, though. We don't work with farms that use synthetic inputs regularly. So maybe if there's someone's not certified and they need to do some spot spraying to get something under control, that might be something we're okay with in a transitional period, but we wanna really see ongoing, really high level of multiple general practices.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then for Dirt Capital, what is the kind of a pitch you're making your investors? Like, what are they investing for? Is it to support the farmers? Is it purely financial? Is it a mix? What would you say that looks like?
Amanda Zakharov: That's a great question. Our investors are impact investors. The first thing we tell them is, “This is an impact-first investment. If you're looking for a market-rate return, look elsewhere.” We have an impact framework that is really important to our investors. Our investors come at it from different angles. So I think all the pieces of it are really what makes this unique.
The first one is kind of what we just talked about, the ecological stewardship. That's, I think, fairly self-explanatory. But we, our farmers, our investors also care a lot about farmer equity, helping farmers get land access, especially first-time land access for expanding and retaining upside in that land, and creating wealth for them.
And then we also have a category on community benefits. So that's like supporting local food economies or farmer education and training. Again, some of those above and beyond things can add extra, kind of impact points for us, I'd say. And then the last one is actually field building, meaning our industry overall of working together as investors in regenerative agriculture.
So we actively reach out, share information, partner with our peers in the space like yourself, and kind of seek to build those relationships so that we're doing our best for the farmers. So if we're not the best fit, I wanna be able to tell you who the best fit is. And I know why because I just talked to them the other week.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh absolutely. We have the exact same view on that. Dive into the equity side a little bit more, 'cause that's kind of our, I don't know, north star, I guess you could call it. For farmland Stocks is we don't want a tenant society in farming. I think that's really dangerous. So, dive into why that is a piece of it. I'm interested to hear your view on that.
Amanda Zakharov: Thanks. It's really, I think, important and interesting one, and we completely agree. We wanna be transitional, or if we take an ownership position, it's because we are able to provide more capital that way and make it more flexible. The thing that we do in our leases is we create these purchase options that are fixed price. So you know, we're a loan balance. You paying a part of the loan and it's going down over the time, this, we actually kinda, is, actually increased the balance. So it could go up by two or 3% per year, and that takes your cash, rent payments down. Then anything above that is upside for the farmer that they keep.
So we're designing it so that hopefully the market value will be higher than the purchase option value. So when a farmer goes to buy it from us, the intention is for the market value to exceed what they have to purchase it. And wanna cap our own returns to our investors because we are very cognizant of the fact that every dollar that our investors get is a dollar that the farmers didn't get.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Then in that set pricing, typically is that situation where the farmer goes to maybe like a local ag bank or a farm credit to get that loan at that point once they have, if there's already built in equity and they're buying it under the value, that's gonna be an easy loan to get. Is that kind of the idea?
Amanda Zakharov: That's exactly the idea, and have built up that business over time. So if, for example, we frequently work with farmers that are transitioning land to organic. So, having that additional cash flow, demonstrating that history there and the history of payments to dirt, it's a much easier loan for those kind of conventional banks to say yes to.
Another thing is also we frequently, our farmers take advantage of government programs that they can't do with something that's being sold on the market that's really quick. The FSA direct ownership loan program is great, but it can take six months.
Brian Kearney: You're right. You've got 30 days.
Amanda Zakharov: Right, exactly. So we specifically are preparing our farmers for that exit. So we're, “Okay, coming up in two years, it's coming–what are you thinking?” Like, “Okay, it's one year. Can we help you prepare?” So.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. So what does that support look like through the life of working with Dirt Capital? Because I think that's a huge differentiating factor. And there's a lot of ag bankers who do the same thing, but they have so many clients. It's not possible to dive in as deep as I think you guys do. So hit that a little bit.
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, that's definitely something we aim for to be kind of an, have an active, ongoing relationship.
So we try to do quarterly calls and annual visits with all of our farmers if we can. And that's providing support, but a lot of it is also just making sure if there are areas that they could use a little bit of help, if there's something, a resource that we can help connect them to, or proactively fund something else.
We've extended additional capital where we see there is a temporary need and there has been some of those things in this current environment, or just with weather events and such. So, we are, we're really responsive and friendly is the biggest thing, and so understanding, and we understand that it's in service of the long-term business.
Sometimes it's necessary to forego some months in order for it to work out. So we craft things constantly and try to be in that communication with our farmers.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think even traditional ag banks are more along those lines than any other banking I've ever, I had experience with. There still is a little bit more caring there. So that's interesting. What is not a good fit for Dirt Capital?
Amanda Zakharov: So I think the impact thing is where we often, the first thing that something cannot meet. So if someone's just starting to do a few regenerative practices, that's awesome work, but unfortunately, it's not the fit for us. So if it's like, okay, we're no till, but we still abuse conventional spraying, or we've tried to reduce herbicide use when it's down 20%, it's just not a high enough bar for us, unfortunately.
And then there's some simple ones, experience. We're looking for over two years of experience and we mean like management of a farm business on the ground. It doesn't have to be the entity continuity or we don't have a box to check, but that’s. we're looking for experience and we're looking for, so the big, the biggest one actually is really deal size.
We're looking for transactions of over a million right now, and that's just due to our small team size and capacity.
Brian Kearney: That makes sense. That makes sense. And what's your like max on that? Is there a max, or is there like a sweet spot where millions are minimum, but we prefer three? Like what's that look like?
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, we prefer two to five is like our best, but we could do up to eight or 10 ourselves, but around that or over that, we'll start to bring in one of our awesome peers.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Yep. That makes a lot of sense. There's actually someone that'll have to shoot your way after this, I think. I think that'd be an interesting conversation 'cause they're a little out of our wheelhouse but maybe in yours.
Cool. No, this is really interesting. So what would you say to the farmers who might. be interested in doing something like this, but they haven't quite taken the leap. Maybe it might not even be the ecological side of it. It might be, hey, just purely financially, this might make more sense, but they're just nervous to make that jump.
What advice do you give in those situations? 'Cause I'm sure you guys fielded a lot of calls of those people, too, even if they're not the right fit now, they might be down the road. So what does that look like?
Amanda Zakharov: No, that's exactly what I was thinking is that even if someone's on that growth path or just trying to exploring options or wants to understand how things are shaping up for that future, it really never hurts to reach out early.
We have relationships that have, we've been talking to farmers for years that the right opportunity hasn't come about, and then now it is. And so we love being able to have those relationships. I keep a track pipeline of all potential farmers that have kind of ever reached out and kind of periodically say, “Okay, maybe I should check in with that farmer, it's been a while. They could potentially be a fit.”
And so if we have a really good–it's hard to find great land stewards, really. So we wanna be, if we find someone, we're like, “Oh, we wanna really work with you.” We're gonna keep following up in the future and try to see, so it really doesn't hurt. We have a farmer inquiry form on our website that goes straight to me.
We will definitely answer you and either point you in the right direction or set up a call to make sure we get the full story.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, perfect. I'll put that in the show notes as well, so it's easy for them to find the link. Let's pivot a little bit, and I want to dive into some interesting deals.
Obviously, you're not gonna be able to go into super detailed specifics. But high level, I want to know, you said you have a lot of unique deals and structures. What's one of like the craziest that has worked out?
Amanda Zakharov: Oh man. Well, there are, we only, we've had 11 exits, so worked out is always a tough one. So that's when things are really, we've done 45 projects total, but so we have a lot of stuff that's going really well, for sure, in the portfolio.
So the craziest one is our project in California, where we actually have Kitchen Table Advisors as a partner, so they’re nonprofit; this is a larger corporate organic dairy producer. And it's very much taken over by corporate in that area. And we wanted to get more kind of smaller individual farm businesses on the land.
So QTA is helping, is identifying those farmers to help take over the land. This corporate dairy producer wants to get off of it. So they just gave back, I think it was 90 acres. And in the fall and we have eight producers on there and there's additional acres to come. So it's kind of phasing out over time.
And that one, we're hoping for a collective buyout of that in the future. So we'll see what happens, that's very much reliant on our nonprofit partner, Kitchen Table Advisors in that one. So pretty unusual.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. What about the like grazing ranching side? You said you have a lot of regenerative ranching in your system.
What does that look like? We've had a lot of recent guests in that space that will be airing right before this, like White Oak Pastures, we had on diving in a little bit there. Super cool farm. Tell me a little bit about that site and what interested you all there.
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, I mean, when we moved–so our roots are in the northeast. So there wasn't organic dairies, but there wasn't real large-scale ranching. So it was new to us over the last few years and we spent a lot of time understanding different dynamics and figuring out what works for our model and what doesn't. And usually, there needs to be something that kind of pulls it all together.
We have a rancher in Oregon, Jackie Owens and Michael Vaughn, there's an article about it actually on Land Magazine.
Disclaimer: Yeah.
Amanda Zakharov: That they had been leasing land and didn't have kind of a home ranch that was owned in their own and they lost the property that they were on. So we helped them buy a new kind of home base, which, where they could—
And that abuts some of the leased land that they had as well and is close to their main base of operation. So this was kind of the piece that brought it all together. That's really important and critical. And that one actually, we created a joint venture structure so we can get a little bit funky in order to serve what the Farmer Ranchers' goals are.
Jackie and Michael are country natural beef producers, so they're part of that, our network. So we also have a large scale. One of our largest projects here in Arizona is 12,600 acres with Cindy Toll of Evergreen Ranch. She raises Creo cattle, kinda desert adapted breed. They're super cool. It was fun to go out into the desert and watch them eat mesquite trees.
Brian Kearney: That's wild.
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah. Yeah. It's a critical conservation property, so that's a very high value conservation on the edge of Leslie Canyon here, a wildlife corridor, so the loan is, we have a mortgage in that case, which is facilitating the conservation component.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Got it. Got it. Fascinating. For someone who is looking at the industry from the outside, let's say they've just graduated college, they're not quite sure what they wanna do, but they're interested in the, maybe the farmland side or maybe specifically the farmland investment side. What would you say they do right after college?
'Cause it's typically not something you can just jump into very easily. What would your recommendation be?
Amanda Zakharov: Oh, it depends so much on what that background and interest is. I mean, the main thing I tell students and recent graduates is the most important thing is working with good people. So if you find an area that you're interested in, and don't just take any company in that space just because it's what you wanna do and focus on that mentorship, that relationship with people you're excited about working with. And you can pull the pieces together that you're–follow what your interest is as you continue to work and grow and make those connections and identify the area that you ultimately wanna go, 'cause you probably don't know, like I didn't know. I didn't know coming outta school exactly what I wanted to be doing.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, no, same. I had no idea. I went into school thinking I was gonna be a lawyer and then realized I hated school and paperwork. So did not do that in the end. But yeah, that makes sense. I think working with good people, that is, especially in this industry, it's so important 'cause it's so heavily relationship-based, like it's a massive industry numbers-wise, but it's a really small industry.
You're kind of one introduction away from anyone in the industry here. So I think that's great advice that we haven't specifically had yet for many of the guests, but that's true. The actual company is probably not as important as who you'll be working for at that company. That makes a lot of sense. And then what resources would you say they should dive into? Like how should they self-educate as well on this industry? Because you can't really learn this type of stuff in school for the most part. So, what did you use to kind of ramp up in this industry?
Amanda Zakharov: Well, I was in school, which was unusual, being going to the food studies at NYU. So I had a–
Brian Kearney: Oh, true, true.
Amanda Zakharov: You read a lot of Wendell Berry and it's, I think it's good to do the reading. There's also some good work on the kind of impact investing side, and I also like to read like stuff like The Blue Sweater, Jacqueline Novogratz, to just get the concept of the financial side of it, if that's of interest.
Brian Kearney: Interesting.
Amanda Zakharov: I also, the easiest thing to do too, I always recommend for students or anyone that's starting that's interested in both the regenerative agriculture and the investing side of it, Regenerative Food Systems Investment Forum has a really good newsletter. So that, I feel like their newsletter really covers the most breadth.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh yeah. Agree. And their conference is also awesome. It's a lot of fun to go to. If you're a student, I'm sure you can get really cheap, maybe even free tickets. I would reach out, but it's an amazing place to start to learn some of that stuff. The snacks are also awesome. It's always like local, organic snacks from small farms. Super cool.
Amanda Zakharov: I'm also on the board of the Sustainable Agriculture Food System Funders, S-A-F-S-F, coming up in June. So now that group has historically been a little more philanthropically oriented, and now we're angling much more for a big tend of diverse capital partners that includes impact investing.
Very much that impact first side of things, but great resources on regenerative agriculture as well. There was also a good amount of policy focus, as well, on their webinars.
Brian Kearney: Oh, fascinating. Okay. When is that conference, did you say?
Amanda Zakharov: That's in June in outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Nice. Nice. Okay. Interesting. I'll have to check that one out. Had not heard of that one yet. Yeah. This has been a really good conversation. For the people who are listening who might be a little skeptical, 'cause that might be a lot of the current audience, is not quite in this bucket. What would you say the financial differences are for the farmer? So not the stewardship side.
Every farmer I've ever talked to wants to take care of their ground as much as they can. Like that's almost every farmer I've ever talked to. That's kind of the bar. But you have to be able to make a profit. You have to be able to make a living to be able to do it. So, what would you say the difference is for farmers in the Midwest on that?
Is it even as feasible in the Midwest on a 2000-acre farm? Is that possible for some of these farmers?
Amanda Zakharov: Yeah, and we've done some of that before, where there are also some states in the Midwest that have anti-corporate farming laws, where we can't use that purchase structure I talked about. But we can also do high LTV mortgages.
So some of the organic grow crop farmers I've talked to have said being able to provide 90 or 95% is a massive difference and to not needing that down payment and still providing a competitive rate may be better than the market rate. We've also done some deferred interests in the past where there's organic transitions.
When we at least purchase structure, we can get super creative. So from a current cash perspective, it gets very attractive while maintaining equity. So it's a balance and every deal we go into, we try to tweak those different levers to match those, the needs of that particular farmer by, in generally significantly more financially attractive than kind of your–unless rates go way down, which is possible in our current environment. Yeah, where we're today.
Brian Kearney: I doubt it. I hope so, but I doubt it.
Amanda Zakharov: We're not going back to where we were.
Brian Kearney: No, I don't. Probably, yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. I hope we don't double, but who knows, to be honest. Okay. Last question I'd like to ask and really dive into that from there is what advice would you give to someone looking at this? What would your advice be to that? Maybe 800 to 1200-acre farmer who might wanna dabble in some of this on some of the acres, test it out, and kind of grow from there. What would your advice be?
Amanda Zakharov: First and foremost, just reach out because every situation is different. So having a conversation about it never hurts. And I think it depends very much on the specific situation and the location. But we can be particularly helpful when there's a kind of relationship built, and then an immediate need to act on real estate that is for sale that you really don't wanna miss the opportunity on.
So the situation particularly that we see in the Midwest, where we get to know a farmer and we're kind of waiting a little bit for this is the time where it makes the most sense. And then we're kind of, we've seen the financials, we've talked about what structure makes sense, we've talked about their business, and then it's like a go and we can move much faster.
And sellers are so different. But I've learned, I used to work in corporate uni course real estate. And I've had every talked to every kind of seller you can imagine, and the hardest kind of seller is a family estate with multiple siblings, I can tell you. So that situation happens a lot in farming.
So you wanna give, you wanna be able to give 'em what they want and quickly and make it clear and easy. So that's what we try to be, we try to add that value on the real estate transaction side where we can work with that sell, we create the transaction, we try to make it smooth. We can handle some of the negotiation, too, and lighten the load.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, it is most certainly the most difficult type of transaction and I would say it's almost the kind of norm in farm ground. Plus, you get the emotions of this was grandpa's farm, that, yeah, it gets dicey. So that's great advice. Where would you like me to send the audience?
Amanda Zakharov: I think our website, we have a for farmer section that gives you a little bit of the criteria that I talked about, which are, you don't have to check every single box of these.
Some of them are more guidelines, and there's a for farmer or the farmer inquiry button on that page that's got the form that goes right to me.
Brian Kearney: Perfect. We'll put that in the show notes and send people your way. I appreciate the time. Yeah, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate the time, and I hope some of the audience reaches out. You all are a very unique fund that cares a lot about the people you work with. So that's, yeah. Excited for that conversation. Thank you.
And that’s a wrap on this episode of The Land Ledger.
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