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 extended family’s orange grove in Calusa, California, first planted in the late 1800’s, which he always reflects upon when buying oranges.

The greater Austin family has used the Bramble Run name for different homes, farms and apiaries throughout the generations. “If we all look far enough in our family trees, we find these stories tied to agriculture,” Frank says. “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, Nebraska. 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 says. “As soon as I actually started to farm myself, I knew instantly that it was just the asset class that I had been looking 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 says. “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 help raise capital for Rubicon.

Thijs Hovers has been running Lucerne Capital for 25 years after moving from his native Holland, focusing 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 tells 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 look at that data. Farmers don’t have that. They’re getting screwed by the process,” Van Beurden explains. “We provide that oversight and in turn help grow these communities.”

While at Lucerne, Eamonn pitched the idea for Bramble Run to Hovers. “I said 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 together,” Eamonn says. 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, making them more efficient and making 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 moves on, similar to farmland. “Bramble Run has to be the catalyst for change,” Austin says. “The way you really get change 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 think future returns may look like after an exit. Instead, the evergreen structure will pay a perpetual dividend 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 says. “We don’t want to own the land and lease it back. We want to own the land and improve the operations.”

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 help manage the land better than they found it. Bramble Run has such partners in every geography in the country. Those partners will help diligence farms, planning to start making 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 says. “We are getting 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 get a percentage of every dollar after that, so they’re getting their salary and fees paid–normal market rates plus a bonus,” Austin says. “We have a unique, built-in incentive structure to reward, but also inspire them to become more productive growers.”

Bramble Run is not looking to purchase land from farmers and call it a day. The farms in their pipeline are valuable farms, priced incorrectly, that need 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 make it damn near impossible to lend to farmers and they take millions and millions. Other funds are probably upselling,” Austin says. “We are doing this the way the land does it…We’re asking the community to tell us what they need.”

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 says. “We want to engage the overall economic productivity of the community…The conversation is futile if they’re not making more profits than in conventional agriculture. There are farmers out there in America today that will become multimillionaires because they were working with Rubicon.”

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 says. “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 targeting 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 focusing 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 changes 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 says. “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 got 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 makes 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 move 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 because of all of this land,” Austin says. The whole profile of California is changing rapidly now. We do see some stabilization and clarity. A lot of people very incorrectly look at California and don’t necessarily make the right assessment as to whether or not now is a good time to get 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 because Austin is confident, based on his experience, will not be interested in amending their farming practices, while the Florida geography poses too much climate risk and commodities like sugarcane are too volatile of markets.

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 overlooked, 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 begin acquiring land,” Austin says.

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 make enough money where institutional capital noticed and that money started flowing in to try to ride the coattails of those lucrative returns,” Taylor Christensen, Agriglobe President, tells 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 because 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 says. “We feel very strongly about the timing of the entry into this asset class.”

The transitions must be economically viable. Agriglobe’s deep domain experience helps 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 says. “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 says. “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 need 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 says. “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 think that we can take that model to other rural economies around the world and help them do that too.”