Farm of Dreams: Athletes Buy Iowa Property

In the event you purchase it, corn will come.

That’s the concept behind the acquisition of a 104-acre farm in northern Iowa by greater than two dozen skilled athletes. Patricof Co. organized the acquisition of the property, Entrance Workplace Sports activities reported.

The special-purpose car is buying the farm by a $5 million fund devoted to agricultural investments; the precise buy worth of the farm is unclear. Athletes who contributed to the fund embrace Joe Burrow, Blake Griffin, Kemba Walker, Khris Middleton and Zach Ertz, spanning the nation’s “Large 4” sports activities.

Burrow is arguably probably the most high-profile athlete within the group, a younger star quarterback who led the Cincinnati Bengals to the Tremendous Bowl final season. He was born in Iowa and lived within the state till he was 4 years previous.

The farm is centered round two crops: corn and soybeans. The state is among the nation’s main contributors of each crops, producing probably the most corn within the nation final 12 months and the second-most soybeans, in response to the Des Moines Register.

The athletes aren’t anticipated to be those rising crops and tilling the land. As a substitute, it’s an funding in Iowa farmland, a sizzling business property. Final 12 months, the typical worth of farmland within the state jumped 17 % year-over-year, in response to an annual survey and Iowa State College report.

The group will lease the land to farmers and hope to garner a single-digit proportion return on its funding.

Mark Patricof informed Entrance Workplace Sports activities that agriculture was of curiosity for his traders, however Patricof held again because the market ran sizzling. He just lately determined it was the “proper time within the cycle to place cash into this asset class.”

The athletes will not be executed with the asset class, both. They’re planning on buying 4 extra farms within the coming years, trying to diversify their agricultural holdings. One potential avenue are watermelon farms in Oregon, which are sometimes smaller and contain charging greater per-acre rents.

— Holden Walter-Warner