Show notes
Learn more about LandFund Partners: https://landfundpartners.com/invest#get-started
Jack Farley speaks with John Farris, founder & CEO of LandFund Partners and former World Bank agricultural economist, about the tightening global food equation — and where the return actually comes from in farmland.
The setup: if the world stopped growing crops tomorrow, John says there are roughly 70 days of food in reserve, down from 110 a decade ago. Two billion more people, more protein per capita, less arable land, and productivity gains that have flattened out. Into that comes a Super El Niño that John's heat maps suggest will hit Brazil, Argentina, and India — the last of which depends on the monsoon to grow the world's most-consumed calorie: rice. Commodity futures prices have risen significantly this year.
That's the backdrop. The investment argument rests on three things.The first is a value that sits on no balance sheet. Across most of the eastern US there are no formal water rights, so LandFund carries its water at zero. In the Colorado River states, where those rights did develop, they've compunded at roughly 11% a year over the past thirty-five years, outpacing the S&P 500 over that time period.John argues the same legal framework is coming to the Mid-South within ten years, pushed by the hyperscalers already knocking on his door for water offsets — and that when it arrives, a line item currently marked at nothing gets marked at something.
The second leg is convergence. When LandFund started in 2013, Midwest row crop farmland traded roughly 140% above comparable Mid-South ground; today the gap is 80–100%. John's argument is that the gap should be zero, and that it inverts: land with 300 years of water, 93% irrigation, and the ability to rotate between ten and twenty crops is worth more than land that is high-quality soil but weather-dependent — not less. Iowa bets on rain. He doesn't have to.
The third is operational. LandFund required regenerative practices in its lease agreements since 2021, and John walks through the J-curve economics: $50–100 an acre and a couple of lean years up front, then lower fertilizer use, fewer passes across the field, less irrigation, and net income he estimates runs 30–40% higher than it otherwise would — which flows straight into rents, which flow into rents.
Also covered: the "dirty secret" of powering data centers using 100x the water they consume, riparian rights and what happens when states start metering overuse, what the One Big Beautiful Bill did to price floors through 2032, solar developers paying 3x farmland value for ground with transmission lines, and why US row crop farmland has been negatively correlated to both stocks and bonds.
Disclaimer: This episode is a fireside chat sponsored by LandFund Partners. Any data, statistics, or information discussed is for informational purposes only. This is not an offer to sell securities. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
About LandFund Partners: https://www.landfundpartners.com/#home
LandFund's piece on water rights: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2026/06/23/water-rights-the-invisible-asset-farmland-investors-are-beginning-to-price-in/
John Farris on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jofarris/
Jack Farley on X https://x.com/JackFarley96
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Timestamps
0:00 Intro on John Farris and LandFund Partners
4:22 70 Days of Food Reserves?
7:45 Super El Niño Risk in 2026
8:31 Iowa vs. the Mississippi Alluvial Aquifer
13:49 Beating NCREIF and the S&P 500: The Playbook
14:55 Water Reserves in Mississippi Alluvial Aquifer Are Immense
20:51 "300 Years of Water at Current Draw Rates"
26:28 Improving the Land and Regenerative farming
32:40 Farm Subsidies and the One Big Beautiful Bill
38:07 Crop rotation: cotton, corn, rice, soybeans
42:53 Is rice the trade right now?
46:39 Soybeans, fertilizer, and China buying again
48:38 Rice at all-time highs
50:11 Optionality beyond farming: Solar, Transmission Lines, Minerals
55:27 Data Centers?
56:09 What's next for LandFund
1:00:37 Why Farmland Has Had Negative Correlation With Risk Assets
1:04:35 Super El Niño: What to Expect
1:06:51 Feeding ten billion people
1:07:40 The 20-year outlook for all Four Crops
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