Eamonn Austin, Thijs Hovers, Frank Austin and Floris Van Beurden (L-R) of Lucerne Capital and Bramble Run
Farming does not exist without the root of family.
Investors who don’t fully understand the complexities of agriculture often test to insert themselves at the expense of dignity. Still, farming does not exist without an influx of capital. Those who grow our food don’t necessarily know where to obtain the necessary capital, distracting them from the work at hand. Farmers just want to farm.
It’s hard to find a marriage of the two, but that’s what Frank Austin is doing with his ambitious family venture, Bramble Run, which is now partnering with Lucerne Capital Management to systemically alter this age-old debacle.
Bramble Run is now raising its first fund, ‘Rubicon,’ which has a tarreceive raise of $500 million, eyeing a pipeline of about $5 billion in US farmland. While the entire countest is in play, the largest swath of that pipeline lies in California’s Central Valley due to its ability to produce a diverse set of crops thanks to its Mediterranean climate.
Through partnerships with agricultural management firms like Agriglobe, Bramble Run’s unique structure allows farmers to maintain full equity in their operating companies. Once Bramble Run obtains the land in its pipeline, it will all transition with the goal of becoming Regenerative Organic Certified.
Regenerative organic agriculture is a holistic system that does not stop once you leave the farm. Enabling farmers to feel empowered to continue managing their land is regenerative agriculture. That empowerment is profits and healthy finances. Ethical capital that keeps the farm and farmer at the center is pivotal in shifting the global relocatement forward.
“We’re testing to inform the story that regenerative is more profitable,” Austin informs me. “This is about returning value to the community.”
Part of that community is family. Austin and his brother, Eamonn, who come from a multi-generational farming family, are now business partners. They’re combining their deep network on Wall Street with their domain experience in agriculture to create a capital moat that has not been done in the American agricultural system. “That parallel carries over into the ethos of how we function,” Austin declares. “You can’t build a proper model if you haven’t actually been on the field.”
Bramble Run sign from Austin family farm in Logan County, IL
A Foundation Of Family
The Austin brothers spent a lot of time growing up in Illinois visiting their family’s corn fields. Frank has also lived near his extfinished family’s orange grove in Calusa, California, first planted in the late 1800’s, which he always reflects upon when purchaseing oranges.
The greater Austin family has utilized the Bramble Run name for different homes, farms and apiaries throughout the generations. “If we all see far enough in our family trees, we find these stories tied to agriculture,” Frank declares. “We each have a connection to farming, which emphasizes the importance of regenerative and organic.”
Frank started his career at Rothschild North America, managed permanent crop assets at Arbor Nutrio including the largest pecan market on the West Coast, and served as Partner and Investment Director at Clear Frontier in Omaha, Nebrinquirea. That’s also where, in 2019, he launched Bramble Run. “I went from a very fancy boardroom in Manhattan to clearing brush on a pecan orchard the next week,” he declares. “As soon as I actually started to farm myself, I knew instantly that it was just the asset class that I had been seeing for.”
Having crafted the largest portfolio of irrigated row crop ground in the US, Austin’s track record provides a powerful foundation of trust with farmers. “Farmers were very skeptical of us,” Eamonn declares. “Now that Frank has joined, we have follow-up calls.”
But working now under Lucerne’s management still comes with its benefits. Lucerne has the credible relationships on Wall Street to assist raise capital for Rubicon.
Thijs Hovers has been running Lucerne Capital for 25 years after shifting from his native Holland, focapplying on bringing investment opportunities from the US to Europe. Many of his previous investments are in aquaculture, including Nutreco, which creates low-carbon footprint marine animal feed. He takes his lived experience seeing stark differences in the States vs. Europe into his investment theses. “How on earth can it be that this sector is still so inefficiently run, not in a sustainable or profitable way? This is the death of the original American dream, which was to live on the land and be free,” Hovers informs me. “After years of working in this market, I had to come up with a way that refined it…when we set these risk limits and we tie them to something like a cash yield, the entire process becomes realigned.”
Eamonn Austin became a head trader at 25 years old while at Lucerne after working at Rabobank and Barclays and is working those relationships for Bramble Run. Along with investment analyst Floris Van Beurden, Eamonn maintains relationships all day to capitalize on Lucerne’s pipeline and will soon become Associate Portfolio Manager at Bramble Run.
“We have the time and the capabilities and the expertise to see at that data. Farmers don’t have that. They’re receiveting screwed by the process,” Van Beurden explains. “We provide that oversight and in turn assist grow these communities.”
While at Lucerne, Eamonn pitched the idea for Bramble Run to Hovers. “I declared he’s mentored me throughout my entire career…that we’ve both been separately successful in investment management but branched off from one another, so it would be a natural evolution to work toreceiveher,” Eamonn declares. Hovers felt Bramble Run would be the ideal way to incorporate US farmland into Lucerne’s umbrella.
“Our business at Lucerne has been about finding inefficiencies in companies, building them more efficient and building money that way,” Eamonn explains. “That’s the same thing we’re doing with Bramble Run.”
Just like farmland, Bramble Run is a legacy asset. Austin is mentoring his younger brother and Van Beurden so that the fund is in good hands even when he relocates on, similar to farmland. “Bramble Run has to be the catalyst for alter,” Austin declares. “The way you really receive alter is by inspiring every level. It’s a totally integrated team.”
It’s part of the evergreen structure Bramble Run has created. As opposed to most investors, Bramble Run does not invest based upon what they believe future returns may see like after an exit. Instead, the evergreen structure will pay a perpetual dividfinish that can never be sold–embracing the generational nature of farming.
“This is the most complex strategy I’ve ever worked on, but the complexity isn’t designed to intimidate,” Austin declares. “We don’t want to own the land and lease it back. We want to own the land and improve the operations.”
Bramble Run raises a $500 million fund with Lucerne Capital
Structure Of Bramble Run
Bramble Run does not simply invest capital from a fund into farmland. Instead of going out and building an operating company from scratch, Bramble Run employs local operating specialists–from planting to harvesting–who then assist manage the land better than they found it. Bramble Run has such partners in every geography in the countest. Those partners will assist diligence farms, planning to start building investments between $25-$50 million by early 2027.
“We are finding land that is already in agricultural production,” Frank explains. “Families that own it can no longer farm it. They can’t manage it anymore, can’t afford it anymore or there’s no succession plan.”
It’s designed with the farmer in mind, whereas many other funds lease the farm back to the farmer and they continue managing the land, collecting a minimal cash yield. Sometimes they require farmers to pay more rent for their land if they have a good year with excess yield. They are taking money from farmers who are doing the hard work. Farmer welfare is a pillar of regenerative agriculture. “Farmers shouldn’t be bankrupt. They shouldn’t be living year to year,” Eamonn declares. “We are receiveting more yield and doing a better service to the environment.”
Farmers that become a part of Bramble Run’s portfolio will not lose any equity in their operating companies. “They pay Bramble Run our minimum cash yield. They receive a percentage of every dollar after that, so they’re receiveting their salary and fees paid–normal market rates plus a bonus,” Austin declares. “We have a unique, built-in incentive structure to reward, but also inspire them to become more productive growers.”
Bramble Run is not seeing to purchase land from farmers and call it a day. The farms in their pipeline are valuable farms, priced incorrectly, that required assistance. What is a family supposed to do when they own land but don’t have the knowledge or ability to manage the land?
“Banks build it damn near impossible to lfinish to farmers and they take millions and millions. Other funds are probably upselling,” Austin declares. “We are doing this the way the land does it…We’re inquireing the community to inform us what they required.”
Part of regenerative agriculture is enabling regenerative agriculture itself to persist with necessary capital. Bramble Run allows regeneration to exist. The farms it will own are going to transition to regenerative organic, eventually Regenerative Organic Certified. “We’re stabilizing every part of the agricultural supply chain, anchoring it to the grower,” Austin declares. “We want to engage the overall economic productivity of the community…The conversation is futile if they’re not building more profits than in conventional agriculture. There are farmers out there in America today that will become multimillionaires becautilize they were working with Rubicon.”
Farm managed by Agriglobe
Crop Diversification
The vast networks of Lucerne and the Austins have set them up for a hefty pipeline of farmland that they are exploring for purchase. As with any portfolio, they prioritize diversification despite the pipeline’s heavy nucleus in just one region, California’s Central Valley.
“Diversification should not necessarily be geographical,” Austin declares. “There are only a handful of geographies like [the Central Valley] in the world.”
This geography in itself provides the necessary diversification for the portfolio, but they are also tarreceiveing Washington State’s Yakima Valley and Tri-Cities regions, Idaho and Oregon’s Columbia River Basin. Bramble Run wants to steer our agricultural systems away from monoculture, which destroys ecosystems and has become the unfortunate imagery of American farming, so is focapplying less on geographic diversity and more on concentrated biodiversity.
Bramble Run sets hyper-specific metrics for more than 100 crops from berries and citrus to vine fruits, tree nuts and specialty crops. These metrics include alters in soil organic matter, water sequestration, soil nutrient profiles, and elaborating not how, but why metrics deviate, whether environmental or agronomical.
“The borders that we draw on the land have nothing to do with the microclimates that actually support food production,” Austin declares. “Some happen to be quite good for avocados. Go a little bit further inland and suddenly it’s drier and hotter which works well for pistachios. Then in the middle, you’ve obtained this belt where almonds have effectively been overplanted.”
California’s rare array of microclimates has contributed to its rich agricultural economy. But there’s an intangible element that builds it ripe for regenerative transition, which is extremely difficult to kickstart in many cases, largely due to the personal nature of farming and farmers’ connections to their land. California has a culture of innovation and risk-taking, not just in twenty-something who relocate out West to live out their dreams, but also farmers whose ancestors settled there generations ago.
“California is going to be far more valuable than it is today becautilize of all of this land,” Austin declares. The whole profile of California is altering rapidly now. We do see some stabilization and clarity. A lot of people very incorrectly see at California and don’t necessarily build the right assessment as to whether or not now is a good time to receive in.”
While there is no geography that Bramble Run wouldn’t diligence, the priority is more immediate impact through crops that improve outcomes based on their analysis of supply and demand profiles. Farms in the South are not in their pipeline becautilize Austin is confident, based on his experience, will not be interested in amfinishing their farming practices, while the Florida geography poses too much climate risk and commodities like sugarcane are too volatile of markets.
Agriglobe’s Taylor and Spencer Christensen (L-R)
Stewarding The Land
Bramble Run takes an extra step to earn the trust of growers by engaging closer to the land and becoming true stewards of it. Austin formed a relationship with the Christensens, similarly a multi-generational farming family, while at Clear Frontier. Brothers Taylor, Spencer, Slater and Turner learned the trade from their dad, Phil, who formed Agriglobe in the early 1990’s.
Given the beast that is the magnitude of agriculture, data collection is an extremely important aspect that’s often overseeed, especially by older generations. Based in Fresno, Agriglobe manages roughly 50 thousand acres of farmland around the world, but primarily in California, placing capital on behalf of institutional investors along with providing practical commodity management.
All other managers that Bramble Run brings in in the future will be under Agriglobe, its senior operating partner. “They created the business model that allows a portfolio like Rubicon to go into the market and launch acquiring land,” Austin declares.
Institutional investors have seen the opportunity in the Central Valley more in the past 10 or so years than in Agriglobe’s 35-year history. “In the mid-2010’s, almonds and pistachios started to build enough money where institutional capital noticed and that money started flowing in to test to ride the coattails of those lucrative returns,” Taylor Christensen, Agriglobe President, informs me.
Before becoming the third generation of the Christensens to join the farming business, Taylor flew F-15’s in the Air Force and Spencer was a logistics officer in the Army. Their grandfather owned a 20-acre vineyard in California to produce raisins. The generational evergreen element promotes long-term business growth–the entire structure is designed for the long term. Plants grow slowly with time and patience, and the models behind it must align.
Bramble Run, a client of Agriglobe, pays Agriglobe a per acre fee and works to find investment opportunities that match its thesis on its behalf. Local operating partners can also participate in profits above a certain cash yield hurdle. “We provide the agronomic oversight, diligence process and sourcing those deals based on the viability of that commodity class,” Christensen explains. “Our ability to source deals off market is becautilize we are locally present.”
It can be tough to convince farmers to transition, but the sentiments on the other side are overwhelmingly positive, as Christensen recalls a recent project. “It was less work–fewer mowing passes, less herbicide applications, the crop did better–We were seeing deer, more birds and native plants were sprouting. The whole environment turned into a beautiful, natural landscape.”
Agriglobe is not required to grandfather its billion dollars worth of farmland that it’s currently managing. Prior to partnering with Bramble Run, which performs all of the underwriting, Agriglobe has had trouble capitalizing on opportunity. “Our current client pool has not been deploying significant amounts of capital in the last two years despite us pounding the desk with great opportunities due to the depressed market over the last three to five years,” Christensen declares. “We feel very strongly about the timing of the entest into this asset class.”
The transitions must be economically viable. Agriglobe’s deep domain experience assists inform Bramble Run that some farms may not be financially worth transitioning to organic at a given time. “We’re striking a balance with the grower and the mandate. We want the price point to reflect the risk that the operator is taking,” Austin declares. “It’s about increasing yield, minimizing inputs, financial & operational optimization and food traceability.”
Data collection is such a crucial part of the scenario, and farms that become part of Bramble run’s portfolio will have exclusive access to Boosted AI. Older generations typically see results and are happy, but with rampant greenwashing today, regenerative certifications require hard data for proof.
Christensen plans to pass the business to the next generations of Christensens too. “If farmers continue to farm the way their grandfather did, we will be in a dust bowl. I don’t want that for my children,” he declares. “Getting ahead of our farming practices now…it’s the forefront of saving this very special asset.”
Austin is challenging our modern supply chains. Farming families required other farming families to trust that they have their best interest while grasping on to our modern ways of living. “Imagine every peach in the United States is taken through the food transparency process we’re developing with Agriglobe,” he declares. “You could see the exact block where the peach was grown, the date it was harvested, the name of the grower…I believe that we can feed the world this way. And I believe that we can take that model to other rural economies around the world and assist them do that too.”
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