Ep #22: A Sixth-Gen Farmer’s Path to Farmland Investing with Marc Hartness and Landon Larkin
What does it take to keep a family farm alive for the next generation? In this episode of The Land Ledger, sixth-generation farmer turned finance professional Landon Larkin joins Brian Kearney and Marc Hartness for a conversation about the future of family farms. From beginning as an engineering student to becoming a Farmland Stock Exchange team member, Landon’s journey sheds light on the capital challenges young farmers face today and what it takes to keep farmland in family hands.
Listen in as Brian and Marc reflect on Landon’s unlikely hiring story and talk about the real-world issues facing the next generation of farmers. From succession planning to agtech adoption, this episode highlights the balance between tradition and innovation, and why off-farm income might be the key to a seventh generation.
What You’ll Hear About in This Episode:
Landon’s background and journey to farming.
How he joined the Farmland Stock Exchange.
Challenges young farmers face when breaking into land ownership.
The importance of helping farmers retain ownership while accessing capital.
Multi-generational farming dynamics and farmland succession.
The value of empowering younger farmers.
How Farmland Stock Exchange offers solutions for both farmers and investors.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“I think just leveraging as much as you can in terms of technology, it definitely pays for itself.” - Landon Larkin
“I don't think it's smart for any farmer to get stuck in the way of just doing it ‘how dad does’ because if there's better ways out there that are more profitable or better for the environment, you have to explore those.” - Landon Larkin
“I think ag is such a word-of-mouth industry. If you know a few farmers locally or people who can put in a good word for you to an ag tech company, or a seed company, or an agronomist role, word of mouth goes a long, long way in the ag industry.” - Landon Larkin
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Read the Transcript:
Landon Larkin: If there's better ways out there that are more profitable or better for the environment, you have to explore those. So I don't think you can just take everything that your partner or your dad says with absolute certainty. I think you explore on your own while also taking their experience into account as well.
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: All right. Welcome to The Land Leisure. Today we have a special episode. It is with Marc Hartness and Landon Larkin. We got the team here to talk about farmland stocks somewhat, but also Landon and him coming to the company, his experience as a farmer. It's gonna be a good episode. I'm excited. Marc, Landon, thanks for jumping on.
Landon Larkin: Yeah, excited to be back.
Marc Hartness: Happy to be back.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, it'll be cool. Perfect. So we'll start off with a quick story about how Landon came to the company. He actually reached out to me on LinkedIn and for any of you that know him, that's not a surprise. We call him LinkedIn Landon internally, he is all over the ag LinkedIn space, but I had literally 24 hours before that.
Promised Marc that we would not hire anymore, 'cause Marc and my relationship, as you guys probably caught from the last episode where we were on, I'm kind of like pedal to the metal. I'm kind of the optimist, visionary, and Marc's entire career has been risk management. So we balance each other very well.
But I promised him I would not hire and then I talked to Landon anyways, without telling Marc I would, and called Marc. I'm like, “Hey, I think. We actually have to–” And yeah, the rest is history. 10 months later, here we are. But Landon, what made you look at farmland stocks and decide to reach out to us?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. So I had been working kind of ag tech at my previous job and I knew I wanted to remain in the ag industry. I mean, I've always, since I was a freshman in college, wanted to be in the ag industry and when I saw what you guys were kind of doing with the mission of trying to save family farms, that's what really got my attention coming from a smaller farm myself. So definitely wanted to make an impact and try to help save those family farms for sure.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes sense. Marc, what'd you think when I told you that we kind of had to hire this guy?
Marc Hartness: I expected to be really underwhelmed. And then I expected to be sold twice on whoever this guy was that Brian found.
And then Brian just advocating, 'cause like Brian mentioned, he tends to get excited, but no, it did went well. It did go well, I guess. Landon was from day one, just ready to roll with the punches. Brian kept asking him to send ridiculous videos talking about certain scenarios. I had never seen that in my career of having to do a video and every time Landon just took it in stride and sent another video.
And I think I finally caved and I was like, fine. Like we'll give him 30 days and let's just see if it works out. And that 30 days just kept snowballing. I think we actually offered him before the 30 days was up. We're like, all right.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. I think it was two weeks in.
Marc Hartness: Yeah, you should probably stick around.
Landon Larkin: Beat the weed out process.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, exactly. You did. That's for anyone looking to come here. Expect to send us lots of videos, but yeah. Tell us a little bit about your family operation. Tell us about the farm, where you're based. Anything you're comfortable sharing.
Landon Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. It's me and my dad are the two kind of main operators of the operation. We farm corn and soybeans in northern Illinois, right north of 80. Kind of grew up on it my whole life. Never really had any inclination of coming back to the farm, to be honest, until I was a freshman in college. When I got to college, I chose engineering as a major, so nothing really to do with farming.
And I hated it. I was stressed out trying to computer code and I was like, “This is not for me. I don't wanna do this for the next 40 years.” And during that time, I would be coming back to the farm in the spring and the fall, some over the summer to help my dad on the operation. And he's like, “Well, this has to go somewhere, someday. Like, you're the only child, you're gonna get it. So you gotta figure, kind of figure out what you wanna do.” And I was like, bro. Honestly, this works pretty fun. I love doing it. I like driving all the equipment, making decisions and stuff like that. So I was like, “Well, I think I wanna switch my major.”
Like, I hate engineering. I want to go into finance and really see what I can do with that. And that's kind of what really sparked my interest in coming back, staying on the family farm and using that finance degree toward something in the ag space.
Brian Kearney: Interesting. When you were going to college, were you not planning on coming back and taking over the farm?
Landon Larkin: No, not at all. I was planning on moving into the city, getting an engineering job and going from there, but glad I didn't do that 'cause I love where I'm at now, so.
Marc Hartness: What made you choose finance when you were switching up your degree and kind of thinking you were going back? I mean, obviously it's relevant, like finance applies to literally any industry, but like why finance and not something more ag-specific?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, it's actually pretty funny. So I ended up going to Northern Illinois University. They don't even have an ag program there. But the reason I went there in the first place is 'cause my mom actually works there, so I got the tuition discount. And I was basically had my college decision made for me. I didn't really get to choose and I was like, “Well, what can I do at NIU that can translate to agriculture without it actually being an ag degree?”
And so there's a lot of different ways you can go with finance, and I thought that'd probably be the most applicable. And I guess we still, we use it in our spreadsheet funds here at the company, so.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. That was helpful. How many, fifth-generation farmers in Illinois have a degree in banking and finance that reach out to us on LinkedIn. One of one.
Landon Larkin: Yeah. I still get kind of overwhelmed when talking to land and ag people. They definitely have the education to beat me on that, but—
Brian Kearney: I don't think that's true. I went to a land grant and I got almost no education, so barely went to class, but Marc went to the equivalent of land grant, went to less class than me, so.
Marc Hartness: Allegedly.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, allegedly. No. Interesting that that makes sense. So when you're looking at the issues, and so people know you're a fifth-generation farmer, right?
Landon Larkin: Sixth.
Brian Kearney: Sixth. Dang. Yeah. Whoops. So yeah. Sixth gen farmer. What issues do you see for people in your position that wanna make it to that seventh-generation farm? What issues are there that you see day to day?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, this could be a long list, but I would say probably the most common one I see just from talking to buddies and friends in the industry is the capital issue. People coming back to the farm, whether they have siblings or other partners in the operation through their parents or uncles, aunts, however, it may be set up for them.
You gotta put up 1.5 or $2 million for your first 80, and that's just pretty unattainable for someone in their early twenties and thirties looking to continue that family farm and continue that legacy. So that's what I would say is probably the biggest one. And other than that, just the margins seem to get tighter every year.
The economics of it don't always make sense, and you don't just wanna be running your equipment over the ground and not making any money doing it. So those are probably the two biggest things I see.
Marc Hartness: Now, where do you kind of see like your vision for your operation? Right? So like you’re sixth gen. It's been going on.
Obviously for generations you weren't planning on taking it over. Now you are, you're working off the farm. You're still working on the farm. Where do you kind of see it fitting into your future plans, right? Is it more of a maintain and optimize? Is it expand?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely maintain, I think you talk to most farmers, they're always looking to expand and yeah, that would be definitely the goal, but I think trying to do things almost like vertically integrate, where maybe it's you partner with a seed dealership and become a seed dealer or sell some sort of chemical or even work ag adjacent to kind of get that off farm income to help expand the operation because farm in it anymore is not the way to expand.
I mean, you have to do other things, diversify your operation outside of just the farm to expand and gain more acres. So that's kind of my plan, I would say.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes sense. I think off-farm income is huge for farmers and I think, again, we've talked about a lot in the show that most farmers don't own everything they rent. You guys are lucky 'cause a lot of it's family, which is nice, but eventually there might have to be a way to purchase that. So is that kind of in your mind as well, like purchasing more of the acres that you guys farm?
Landon Larkin: Oh yeah, for sure. Obviously, I hope our family comes to us with the first right, but you gotta plan on that at some point. You might have to buy out a cousin or two.
And that's just the reality of the ag industry the way it is right now. And so I think working with a company like us or any sort of succession planner is always important to have kind of set up before the time comes. So you're kind of ahead of that as it comes up between your family and whatever your situation requires at that time.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think something that is interesting to me is the, on that margin side. What types of things are you doing as a smaller operation but not the smallest? You're probably the low end of mid-sized, I would say. What types of technology are you investing in where that makes that little bit of difference? And what things are you trying on the farm to kind of juice those returns a little bit?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. So we're working a lot with different technologies. We use FieldView for all of our kind of planning and organizing, almost like our CRM for the farm. We use a lot of precision planting technology on the planter, so we're able to track varieties and manage chemicals and applications.
And then also we have explored these on cover crops after corn. And then we'll use those. We can get a little extra income for those cover crops as well, just to help with the tighter margins. I know last year, ‘24 was brutal for a lot of people. It's looking a little better this year, but I think just leveraging as much as you can in terms of technology, it definitely pays for itself on our farm at least so.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes sense. For that cover crop, how do you get extra income from that?
Landon Larkin: Yeah. So we plant seed corn, so we do, we have a couple seed corn contracts with Pioneer and they actually pay you extra bonuses for putting cover crops on after they come in and harvest it for you.
Brian Kearney: Got it. Do they pay for the seed too?
Landon Larkin: I'd have to check on that. I don't think so.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, just curious.
Landon Larkin: You get extra bonus, extra bonus bushels. It's kind of a crazy formula, but kind of hard to follow, but makes sense. Makes more money so.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, can't turn that down.
Marc Hartness: It's a finance major. How do you feel about like the kind of the pending transition, right?
Like I feel like that's kind of hard, especially in farming, where it's not like, “All right, 65, I'm done, I'm out.” Pension’s kicked in. Here we go. There's a lot more to farming than just knowing how to operate everything. How do you feel like that transition's happening in your family? Like what conversations are you having?
What responsibilities are you taking on now? What responsibilities have you not taken on? How are you guys handling that in your family?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, that's a really good question 'cause I feel like that's what a lot of families struggle with and that's honestly been the hardest part of like between me and my dad is because he's done everything for 40 years.
He does it his way and he knows what he is doing. And then I come in out of nowhere and looking and saying, “Hey, I'll do that for you.” Well, what do I do? So I kind of gotta work with them to be like, “Hey, How have you done it? Is this the right way to do it?” And then also compare with other people. “Are we doing this the right way or is there better ways out there?”
I don't think it's smart for any farmer to get stuck in the way of just doing it how dad does because if there's better ways out there that are more profitable or better for the environment, you have to explore those. So I don't think you can just take everything that your partner or your dad says with absolute certainty. I think you explore on your own while also taking their experience into account as well.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, family businesses are tough. My family has a family business, also has tight margins, the newspaper industry, so margins used to be good and weren't. It's actually a very close allegory to farming right now, but that is always the hardest part is trying to kinda walk that line of helping and looking towards the future while also being like, “Well, yeah, the only reason we are where we are is because you were doing that.” Like, the reason we have a successful thing right now is because of you.
Now I'm trying to keep going and technology has changed and data's come out. So are there specific things that you have tried or I know you just picked up your first farm on your own that you're renting. Are there things you're gonna be trying there? Or what does that look like?
Landon Larkin: Yeah, so that was kind of a trial by fire, so I'm kind of doing everything on my own. Rented a small piece from a previous landlord of my dad's, and he's helping me do all of that. We're kind of doing it together to start out, and then eventually I'm working toward in doing it on my own, but I think the biggest part of that is just asking questions. For this first couple years, we're gonna keep it the way we have been doing it, me and him, but as I kind of gain more knowledge and ask questions and figure out as I go, might work in some more trials or stuff I can do on my own that I might think is a better way of doing it.
Obviously, right now, I'm still trying to kind of get ahead of that learning curve and pick up as much as I can ask questions to everyone I come in contact with, so.
Marc Hartness: yeah, I think that's a tough part in a family business is you kind of advance your way up to skilled labor and it's really easy to just kind of stop there.
You don't actually get a take on more of the decision-making rules and it's just really easy to stay there, like that siloed area where it sounds like, I think for you, that transition is kind of being started by just dropping you off on the neighbor's ground. And saying figure it out, like, I'm right here.
But now you try, instead of like giving you more decision-making in this operation, let's test you out. Like just take the floaties off, drop you off in the middle of the pool.
Landon Larkin: Yep.
Brian Kearney: That's a great way to do it.
Landon Larkin: Yeah. And I think that's how I'd probably learn best. I mean, as long as he's right there to tell me if I'm wrong or help me when I'm down.
I mean, why not let a kid fail, right? I mean that's like the way to do it in my opinion.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, absolutely. Fail on a part that isn't part of the larger farm. It's, but I don't think you'll, I don't think you're gonna fail. It sounds like you got things locked up pretty well with that. How do you think about, I know you said maintaining is a huge thought, but you also picked up your first farm, so you're not, you're also thinking about growing and you want to.
How are you thinking about doing that in an industry where, for us, we can cold call for the company, but you're probably not gonna be cold calling landlords for yourself 'cause you can run into hot water pretty quick with other farmers doing that. How do you think about trying to expand when you can't just go out and sell like you can in the business world?
Landon Larkin: I think there's a lot of different ways to kind of go about it, but the main two I see are running more ground. Obviously, it's super competitive around Northern Illinois, Central Illinois on cash rent, but that's one way, like all your rent at ground is gonna pay for the ground you own or the ground you buy.
So that's one way. Another way is partnerships. If it be like a fund or another sort of company that comes in and does like a sale-leaseback or maybe they're looking for investors that want exposure to farmland, things like that, where you could pick up some more rented acres through that sort of method.
I think those are probably the two biggest ways to go about acquiring land. I mean, it's not very often my neighbor at church comes in and says, “Hey, I have acres to rent to.” Yeah. That's almost never. So those are the two ways I kind of see. And then obviously the off-farm income to help subsidize that as well.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. That makes sense. Is that what you hear most people do, is they partner with people to take that over?
Landon Larkin: Yeah. Maybe it's like the doctor in town or somebody who owns a few farms and rents it to him. There's a lot of cases like that I see. Or just people that are looking to, whether it be through like funds or something like that, that rent it back to people as well.
Brian Kearney: What would you say to anyone who is looking into pursuing that off-farm income and getting a job. 'Cause how you did it was pretty unique. It's not the way most people go about getting a job at all. Like not even close. So how would you tell that person that is a recent college grad, there's been a lot of rumors about layoffs at John Deere and some seed companies as well.
So for those people, what advice would you give them with, “Hey, that happened. Sure. Brush yourself off. Keep going.” What advice would you have? How should they go about it?
Landon Larkin: Yeah. I would say the biggest thing is just have conversations. I think ag is such a word-of-mouth industry. If you know a few farmers locally or people that can put in a good word for you to an ag tech company or aseed company or an agronomy, agronomist role, word of mouth goes a long, long way in the ag industry and having that reputation as being someone who follows through and does what they're supposed to do is probably the biggest thing that could help get you a good job at ag.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I agree. Marc, anything you want to go over before we go to the last couple questions?
Marc Hartness: Yeah, I would kind of go back to LinkedIn a little bit. We jokingly do call you LinkedIn Landon, and we've seen it at conferences where people are approaching you or yelling at you across the hallway like, “Oh, hey Landon.” And we're all trying to figure out how you know that person and sometimes you even are at first because–
Brian Kearney: Sometimes you're trying to figure out how you know that person.
Marc Hartness: Yeah. You've just, you've built a crazy network in the ag space in such a short amount of time and it start, I don't even know when it started, but like it's how we connected with you and now we're working together.
I just thought it was interesting because I had a LinkedIn I think right after college and I wasn't, I never saw LinkedIn as more, it was just like a social, like a professional Facebook to me. I only connected with people I literally worked with, like it was just a collection of old coworkers, and then I would just see if they got new jobs.
Like that's all I saw it was. And I just feel like now it's such an opportunity to leverage and you've been leveraging it really, really well. And not just spamming connections, like it's a real connection. There's dialogue, you're active and you're connecting people who then are literally saying hi to you when they see you in person.
What kind of made you see LinkedIn that way and like how does that not–obviously, professionally, I see what you do because you're in your professional aspect, but then in your personal aspect, like how do you think that's helping you in farming just having that network.
Landon Larkin: No, I think that's a great question because when you talk about ag, nobody really would think about LinkedIn at first, and we did some research on this as a company, is there's probably around 2 million people in the ag industry in the US and if you just think 10% of them are on LinkedIn, that's 200,000 people that are in the ag industry on LinkedIn that are looking to do business or looking to sell some sort of product, looking to make connections with people. And so that's a lot of people that you can get in front of pretty quickly if you really think about it. So I think that's a kind of a good way of looking at it. Most people probably wouldn't think of that of it that way, but I mean, it's a free tool that you can use to get in front of people and talk and make good connection with people. So that's the way I view it.
Marc Hartness: Yeah, I would, just to pile onto what you're saying at this point now, if you're not leveraging that, I think you're kind of missing out because you have the connections of someone with like a 20-year career at this point because you're able to leverage your time super effectively.
You don't have to be at a conference every weekend bouncing from person to person when trying to be remembered. It's been really impressive to see someone so young just like absolutely see an opportunity and take advantage of it. Like you're, it's impressive. I'll leave it at that.
Landon Larkin: Appreciate it.
Brian Kearney: I have to start being mean to you on the show or being too nice. I don't know. Yeah, gimme some negative feedback.
Marc Hartness: Public-facing.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, exactly. No. Cool. Yeah, I think the last bit and then we'll dive in. We'll get back to work. What advice would you give that person that your family has a farm, you're going to college, you're not sure if you want to take it over, you think maybe, but what advice would you give them when they're right at that kind of inflection point in their life, really? It's a pretty big decision they have to make. What advice would you give?
Landon Larkin: This is gonna be super biased, but I would say do everything you can to do it. And the reason I say that is, yeah, it's gonna be hard. There's gonna be a lot of long days, 16, 12, 16-hour days that you're like, “Why am I doing this? This isn't fun.” But the lifestyle pays off, like living out in the country, raising animals, raising crops, having that family tied to the ground.
There's just, you can't really put into words the lifestyle that comes with it. That's why I love it so much, and I think every farmer would probably agree with me on that. You won't trade it for the world. So that's what I would say. Just do it. I know that's not a very decision-based answer, but–
Brian Kearney: No, I like it. I like it. That's great. Cool. Well, hey, thanks everyone for jumping on. We'll do more of these now and again as I forget to book guests, and I tell them in the morning we have to record an episode. But, no, this was fun. I will definitely do this more. Landon, thanks for jumping on.
Landon Larkin: Yeah.
Brian Kearney: Marc, thanks for co-hosting again. Soon we're gonna have to have you two co-host one without me. Kinda like Landon's dad is doing. Let you go and let you fail if you need to. No, it is cool. Thank you guys. Let us know what you think. We'll have some stuff in the comments so you can reach out to Marc and Landon and yeah, have a great day. Good luck with the rest of planting season.
And that’s a wrap on this episode of The Land Ledger.
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