Heartland Opportunity Partners L.P.
Land Value Trends
Source: Avg of KC and Chicago Federal Reserve Districs
Source: USDA
A Call to Heartland Farmers
With a background in Agriculture and first hand experience of the agricultural bust of the 1980's and its decades long effect on the central US economy, Heartland Opportunity Partners was created to relieve some of the pressure building up in our Agricultural based economy in the Heartland by giving farmers an attractive way to invest in promising companies in their own region in a very managed and attractive manner that will give them diversity into industries that are generally outside their day to day interaction and thus less susceptible to a down case agricultural scenario.
The Great Land Boom and the Genesis of HOP
The bust of the 1980s was a region wide event that has dictated much of the last 20 years of the economic story of this region of the country. However, after thirty years of working hard to re-accumulate land while building their operations and with a 300% average increase in farm ground over the last 10 years, farmers have suddenly found themselves in a very unique position. The central US is emerging across several industries however billions and billions of dollars are tied up in agricultural real estate that has climbed to historic levels. Our farmers are a core pillar of the economy in this region and we are working hard to convince our farm community that there are other viable and attractive investment opportunities. Instead of continuing to bid land prices to the moon we are imploring our farmers to consider financing and being the capitalists of this region. We very much understand that you have for thirty years built your own businesses and managed everything yourselves. We understand that you like dirt and iron and that there is certainty in this. We at HOP are balancing a fine line because we will never tell anyone that farmland is not one of the best investments in the world. It will always be there. You can touch it, feel it and know what its "value" is. However, the extraordinary times we are living in have given us a once in a century opportunity to reorganize the economic balance of power in this country. There are good, hard working entreprenuerial companies in this region that are starving for growth capital. We firmly believe that taking this opportunity when we are at historically high land prices to refrain from bidding land to the moon and join us in building good, strong and lasting companies is the best option for you and our neighbors. You will ultimately be more diversified into promising opportunities and we can take some of the froth off these extraordinary times. Keep farming, keep being a backbone of this area of the country's economy, but we urgently ask that you consider your capital allocations carefully in these extraordinary times. Let's turn this story into a story of the emergence of a region built on 30 years of hard, nose to the grindstone work and not the sad boom/bust cycle that is so challenging to avoid in a commodity based economy like our ag driven central US economy.