Farm of Dreams: Athletes Buy Iowa Property

If you buy it, corn will come.

That’s the idea behind the purchase of a 104-acre farm in northern Iowa by more than two dozen professional athletes. Patricof Co. arranged the acquisition of the property, Front Office Sports reported.

The special-purpose vehicle is purchasing the farm through a $5 million fund dedicated to agricultural investments; the actual purchase price of the farm is unclear. Athletes who contributed to the fund include Joe Burrow, Blake Griffin, Kemba Walker, Khris Middleton and Zach Ertz, spanning the country’s “Big Four” sports.

Burrow is arguably the most high-profile athlete in the group, a young star quarterback who led the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl last season. He was born in Iowa and lived in the state until he was four years old.

The farm is centered around two crops: corn and soybeans. The state is one of the nation’s leading contributors of both crops, producing the most corn in the country last year and the second-most soybeans, according to the Des Moines Register.

The athletes aren’t expected to be the ones growing crops and tilling the land. Instead, it’s an investment in Iowa farmland, a hot commercial property. Last year, the average value of farmland in the state jumped 17 percent year-over-year, according to an annual survey and Iowa State University report.

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

Mark Patricof told Front Office Sports that agriculture was of interest for his investors, but Patricof held back as the market ran hot. He recently decided it was the “right time in the cycle to put money into this asset class.”

The athletes may not be done with the asset class, either. They are planning on purchasing four more farms in the coming years, looking to diversify their agricultural holdings. One potential avenue are watermelon farms in Oregon, which are often smaller and involve charging higher per-acre rents.