Farmland Partners adds to acquisitions team – exclusive

Farmland Partners, the NYSE-listed US farmland investment firm has made a new hire to its acquisitions team and is currently recruiting for a corporate financial analyst to join the firm’s management team.

Wade Harrison has joined the acquisitions team as farm manager and will be based in Memphis, Tennessee. He will be responsible for sourcing and handling acquisitions in the Mississippi Delta area ­– Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana – and the Southeast US more generally as part of an effort to expand the company’s exposure away from Nebraska, Illinois and Colorado. He will also assist with managing existing farms in the portfolio and tenant relations, according to Luca Fabbri, chief financial officer at Farmland Partners.

Harrison joins from Chess Ag Full Harvest Partners, a private investment farmland fund, where he was a row crop farm manager. Prior to this, he was the general manager of a custom farming company. Harrison has also operated his own farm for 13 years and holds an equity stake in a Mississippi-based farm growing row crops including soybeans and wheat.

Farmland Partners listed on the NYSE in April this year after raising $49.5 million in an initial public offering. This was later followed by a secondary share offering valued at $44 million in July. At the end of the second quarter Farmland Partners had approximately 22,994 acres under management.

“Since our IPO we have already been able to deploy capital quickly and efficiently. Wade’s addition to our team will allow us to significantly enhance our acquisition pipeline and transaction execution capability, with a specific focus on a major US agricultural area – the Mississippi Delta – that presents significant investment opportunities,” Paul Pittman, chief executive of Farmland Partners, told Agri Investor.