RG 355 – Investing in US Farmland and Agriculture with Artem Milinchuk

Are you looking to invest in a new asset class? This week, we talk about something we’ve never covered before—investing in farmland and agriculture in the US.

Artem Milinchuk is the Founder of FarmTogether, an investment platform that helps people invest in farmland and turn agricultural lots into tradeable assets.

US farmland is an uncommon yet lucrative asset. It’s low-volatile, high-yield, a hedge against inflation. However, many investors tend to shy away from this asset class due to high initial costs and the specialized knowledge and skills required to manage farmland.

Interested in becoming an Investor with Reed? Click here to join his Investor email list.

Tune in to this week’s episode to learn how Artem and FarmTogether make farmland investing more manageable and accessible to investors. Who knows? Maybe investing in agricultural real estate is the next best decision for your portfolio.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• US farmland has lower volatility and higher yields compared to traditional real estate.
• Water source is one of the most important factors to consider when underwriting and investing in farmland.
• When investing in farmland, you have to trust the people underwriting for you.
• You can have a direct or creative model in farming; as an investor, both costs and returns are yours even while renting it out.
• As a farmland owner, you can profit from land appreciation, rent, and harvests.

LINKS
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmilinchuk/
https://farmtogether.com/

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Reed Goossens (00:00):

Good day. Good day guys. Now, before we dive into today’s show, I want you to let you know that some of you may be aware that over the past eight years, I have built a substantial multi-family real estate portfolio here in the US worth over half a billion dollars. And in that time, my passive investors have received fantastic double-digit returns. And now you too can invest directly into my deals for as little as $50,000. So if you’re an interested investor, head over to reedgoossens.com to find out more. That’s reedgoossens.com. Now, back into the show.

Artem Milinchuk (00:39):

What’s different in farming is that you also can have a direct operated model, meaning that you will rent, uh, you will contract out your farm to farm management, company or family. And you as an investor have full risk of the budget, meaning that, um, the inputs, the costs are all yours, but all the profit is yours. So that’s the kind of the gamut that the returns run and farmland as an app, that clouds returns anywhere between six to call it 10, 11%, which is actually quite good when you compare it over the last 30 years to equities, to bonds, to gold, it had outperformed most, most asset classes.

Speaker 3 (01:30):

Welcome to investing in the US, a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market. Join Reed as he interviews, go-getters, risk takers, and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing.

Reed Goossens (01:50):

Good day, good day, a ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US Podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host, Reed Gossens. Good as always, to be with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned in to learn from my incredible guests, and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States when it comes to real estate investing, business investing, and entrepreneurship. Each show I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created their businesses here in the us, how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately created extraordinary lives for themselves and their families. Life by design, as I like to say. Hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (02:37):

If these guys can do it, so can you. Now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes, and you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Goosens. You can find the show wherever you podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. But you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to reedgoossens.com, Click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts where you can see my ugly mug, but the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough outta me. Let’s get cracking and into today’s show.

Reed Goossens (03:23):

Today, the show, the pleasure of chatting with Artem Milinchuk. Sharkk Artem is the founder of Farm Together, an investing platform which focuses primarily on farmland and agricultural investing. Farm together owns 40 deals across six states in 13 different crop types. And prior to founding farm together, Artem was the number one employee and CFO VP of Operations at Full Harvest Technologies, a platform for buying and selling produce. He previously worked at Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, Ian, y and p, and pwc. I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the show today to share. He has incredible insight and knowledge, but enough of me, let’s get him out here. Aum, welcome to the show. How you doing today, mate?

Artem Milinchuk (04:01):

I’m doing well. Reed uh, great to be here,

Reed Goossens (04:04):

Mate. It’s absolutely great to have you here. And we’re gonna talk about a really interesting topic that I don’t actually think I’ve covered in nearly nine and a half years of doing this podcast. I’ve never spoken about farm investing or farmland investing. We wanna get into that in a little bit. But before we do, can you rewind the clock and tell me how you made your first ever dollar as a kid?

Artem Milinchuk (04:20):

Oh man. Yeah. Uh, let’s see, I think it was in seventh grade. My family is one of the first one to I a computer and buy a printer. And this was back in Russia where I grew up. And, uh, me and a couple of my mates, we started creating this little kind of summary pages of etop and sort of, I guess the thoroughly clip note and was selling them for like some ridiculously cheap amount that barely covered the price of ink and definitely didn’t, was not a profitable business, but it was a lot of fun.

Reed Goossens (04:53):

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And, and walk us through the story. You mentioned Russia. So tell us about the immigration story and how’d you come to the us?

Artem Milinchuk (05:01):

Yeah, you know, I was, uh, kind of wild to think about it this days, but I was born in not even Russia, but Soviet Union. So in the eighties and then Soviet Union collapsed, Russia happened. Um, I moved to Canada in 2007, but I was born and raised in Russia, went to university there. My first couple jobs at EYPWC were in Russia and the, I know we’ll get into it, but the early inklings of what I wanted to do in life, and there’s a special attachment to food and farmland came from those late eighties where almost everyone had the silk plots of land. And that’s because the government couldn’t really support its population, so you had to grow your food. And with my parents and grandparents, we would work the food in the summer, the, the land, so we would have the food in the winter. And that’s what gave me this early appreciation for the timelessness of food and farmland.

Reed Goossens (05:56):

Yeah, that’s, it’s an interesting thing cuz a lot of people don’t think about how products are, are made, you know, particularly produce is, you know, arrives on our shelves. And sounds like back in the day, back in, before the fall of the Soviet Union, probably even probably after this, the fall that you guys were having to cultivate your own, essentially produce off the land. Right. You you truly were living and breathing,

Artem Milinchuk (06:16):

Truly living and breathing,

Reed Goossens (06:18):

Brought eggs, meat, you know, wheat. Yeah,

Artem Milinchuk (06:20):

Chicken, eggs, uh, potatoes was the main one. Yeah. And then veggies and uh, you know, my grandma, she would, uh, uh, preserve, uh, strawberries, mix them with sugars, would have the same jam in the winter, so, so good. Yeah.

Reed Goossens (06:35):

. So then what was the decision to move to Canada? What, what, why did you want to move to, uh, north of the border?

Artem Milinchuk (06:43):

I think it was a desire to be in a much more global and multicultural environment. So I moved to Toronto and Toronto is kind of like US and Canada. It’s a big melting boat for people from all over the world coming here. It’s a very young city as well. And I also, I was in finance economics, I’m still am. I wanted to be in a city that had a global forward-looking view of finance and economics and mosco, despite, at the time being a rapidly growing financial center, not be compared both to North American places like Canada, US or finance.

Reed Goossens (07:20):

Hmm, interesting. And, and did you just on a whim get on a plane and come, or did you have a visa? Did you,

Artem Milinchuk (07:27):

Uh,

Reed Goossens (07:27):

Any, any romantic stories? ?

Artem Milinchuk (07:29):

Yeah, unfortunately not. Uh, it was the a uh, a mix of having some family friends in Canada already and Canada having a very accommodated system if you already spoke English, which I did if you had a higher education. So they have, I think maybe had still have a point system. They would look at, you know, how how valuable are you to Canada? And so our family, I guess what valuable and how to, but the, the cut and we came in in, yeah, 2004 to 2007.

Reed Goossens (08:02):

Yeah. Right. And then do, are you currently still in Canada today or are you back here in the States?

Artem Milinchuk (08:06):

Uh, I’m based in the States since 2016 to 2017. I am in Portland, Oregon.

Reed Goossens (08:13):

Mm-hmm. And talk to us about that immigration, because obviously, you know, you’re moving from Russia to North America, being Toronto, obviously, for those people out there who have never gone through visa issues in your entire life, the US is one of the hardest countries to get into , but Canada is a little bit more, uh, accommodating. Uh, so was there always a desire to come to the US at some point?

Artem Milinchuk (08:33):

Absolutely. I think it’s the same thing of just wanting to be in the place where magic happens and where the cutting edge of your profession is. I think for me it’s always been really important to be the best at what I do. And, uh, around 2015 to 2016 is when the idea of perform together really crystallized, but I was not ready yet to start it. So I was very fortunate to join a startup of my friend from business school. I went to UPenn in United States in 2010, 2012. So my friend started a company that is adjacent to what we do now at Farm Together called Food Harvest, which is that, uh, marketplace for fruits and vegetables. And she was based in Santo, so I joined her there. California is of course the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the US and in some way globally. Uh, so I came there and then I later on stayed because again, this is where you us to very much the land of magic, the land of dreams, and, uh, despite needed being hard luck, I think all the, the most curate interesting, ambitious people, they come to United States and it’s just a phenomenal place to build a business.

Reed Goossens (09:44):

Yeah. Well, and, and talk to us about the early days of Full Harvest, right? Was was the, that was the first, I mentioned earlier you’re the, the VP of operations, so you’re probably belly the Beast first employee, you know, that startup culture, just every, you know, no systems in place. So how did that help you, you know, go on to create Farm together and, and, and was farm together already in the back of your head? Or was it, you know, something that was, was born out of, you know, working in Full Harvest?

Artem Milinchuk (10:11):

It was in the back of my head. Um, but I was not ready as an entrepreneur to strike out on my own quite yet. Uh, my 10 years before Full Harvest was spent investing in, in food and agriculture on behalf of Canadian investment funds.

Artem Milinchuk (10:29):

Hmm. So I joined Full Harvest exactly. Its first employee at the time was just, uh, myself and the founder, Christine Moley, who I met for business school. And the basic idea of full, uh, full Harvest is really brilliant. It’s still is about a third of produce is thrown out on weighted at farm level in United States for variety of reasons. And most of those reasons are not good reason. So what Jiro does is that they connect farmers that have that number two, produce directly to buyers that don’t care what your apples look like, so what those buyers juice companies, baby food, pet food, so anything that processes your, your Apple, your zucchini. Um, and I spent about a year there, uh, really helping stand out the company fundraising, hire the team, that financial model. So just exactly being in the belly of the beef. And I think the biggest lesson for me was not the professional aspect to call it the business aspects, but it was the mental aspect, seeing how Pristine just persevered through so many ups and downs and in early stages it feels like every day you are the verge of dying. Uh, and she just kept powering through and she still is powering through many years later. So I think for me, that was the biggest inspiration. It’s just being firsthand what it means to grind through. And to this day, I believe that’s one of the biggest lessons for me and for life and business in general, is the people that win. They don’t necessarily that smarter or the most creative or the more something, it’s the people that just have the raw pain tolerance to keep going no matter what.

Reed Goossens (12:06):

Right. No, I think that’s exactly right. Perseverance and showing up is 90% of the battle. Yes, sir. You know, so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so, so important. But, but let’s pivot and talk about farm together because I have a little bit of a background in not a background. I’ve, I’ve had it delved into the farming world from an investment point of view as a sort of third party, you know, I, I raised a little bit of capital for a hemp farm, uh, in Denver. Um, but just break down what farm together is as a platform.

Artem Milinchuk (12:38):

Absolutely. So at a most basic level, it’s a way for people to invest in farm land and for farmers to get access to more creative capital options than exist for them before farm. To get started, and I’ll break it down. So first, just very simply how it works. How do farms make money? It’s very similar to real estate in that you make some portion of your returns from right appreciation of land. Historically United States in the last 15 or so years, land appreciated on average by 5.9%. Secondly, you make current income from rent or harvest. So same as real estate, you rent it out to tenants. Sometimes it’s a fixed lease. Sometimes if the retail, you also get a percentage of the revenue. Um, what’s different in farming is that you also can have a direct operated model, meaning that you will rent, uh, you will contract out your farm to farm management, company or family.

Artem Milinchuk (13:41):

And you as an investor have full risk of the budget, meaning that, um, the inputs, the costs are all yours, but all the profit is yours. So that’s the kind of the gamut that the returns run and farmland as an app, that cloud returns anywhere between six to call it 10, 11%, which is actually quite good when you compare it over the last three years to equities, to bonds, to gold. It has outperformed most, most asset classes. I think the only one that has an outperformer that might be changing is, is the reeds. Mm-hmm. , but last couple years haven’t been gentle to the reeds in United States, especially commercial ones. So I think farmland might be edging there. Um, and then on the volatility side, which is a way to measure risk, and there’s two ways to measure risk, but the one is volatility, farmland is about 7%, which is comparable to bonds, much lower than real estate.

Artem Milinchuk (14:37):

Uh, and then another way to think about risk, which is I think how our grandparents would think about it, which is, am I gonna lose money? And the beauty of farmland as an athlete class that look, yeah, absolutely way to lose money. But generally when we look at the index, there’s only been two quarters when the index went down. And overall, because of the fundamental trend in population growth, they don’t make land anymore. Improving diets, you have very strong long-term trend towards appreciation of land values. So unless you’re putting on debt or you screwed up your water underwriting, you typically will not lose money on farmland, especially over 10 year period. And then Reid, I know I’ve been speaking for a bit, so one last point and then I’ll shut up. Uh, but another way you can lose money and this one is really important for today’s environment.

Artem Milinchuk (15:28):

You can lose money in real terms though, inflation, I think we in the last 20 years, forgot inflation exists. And then welcome to today, uh, farmland has done really well in periods of high inflation, and overall it performs, at least historically has performed really well as an inflation hedge. Uh, and that is because partially, again, I just like, after having done bachelor’s masters in mba in finance, I like to come back to explaining things like, you’re fine. So , uh, if there is a fixed amount of land and there’s now more money printed, well mechanically, uh, land prices will go up. But then secondly, land, uh, farmland goods compose hundreds of items in the t p i, it’s the food, fuel, feed and fiber. So the, besides the, you know, your almond milk or your corn dog, um, the, there’s a lot of derivatives that are made out of, um, farm products, ethanol being one of them of course. So there’s just a lot of great things going on with farmland that you don’t have in any other asset class. And so that’s why we advocate strongly for people to, of course, depending on the portfolio, but a few percentage points to be allocated to Carmen,

Reed Goossens (16:51):

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Reed Goossens (17:27):

When you talk about the risk, you mentioned a few things and I grew up on a small hobby farm in Australia, um, where we didn’t have, we had a dam and we had, we had rain capture. Water to me is the number one thing that I don’t think people, particularly here in the United States, particularly southern California where I live, take it for granted, right? Water to me is such a commodity that is discounted, um, and given it away because they think it’s, it’s, you know, it’s endless, but it’s not. It has a finite amount of it. So you mentioned underwriting water. How much of a risk does that play into the overall success of a farm? And, and if you, you know, as you mentioned, if you stuff it up or get it wrong, you know, what are the sort of, what could, what could eat you?

Artem Milinchuk (18:08):

Yeah. And, uh, I think you’ve been in southern California probably will have a special appreciation for it because we seem to always go in California through this period of, uh, drought. And then this year people follow that way of almost flood. And that’s normal for California, by the way. This California has gone through those, uh, periods for hundreds of years. It does not prevent California from having a 40 billion agricultural economy, which by the way is the fifth largest in the world if California was a country. It just speaks again to the, the enormous size that US is not California. But to answer your question, water is a key factor when you are underwriting what’s called permanent crops. So in our case, it’s your tree nuts, it’s your citrus, it’s your apples. Water is the different beast when it comes to underwriting, uh, what’s called bro crops.

Artem Milinchuk (19:01):

So this is your corn, your soybeans, uh, because in a lot of places within say Midwest or Illinois, you get so much water from the sky that you have a different issue. what is staying on the farm. So what you need is to invest into tiling and drainage to get the water out of your farm. Um but in the case of West Coast, uh, Oregon, California, Washington are the states that have 50 billion plus in, uh, agricultural commodity production and underwriting for what it means to have a really good understanding of what availability now and in the future. And it is a very complicated endeavor. One of the edges that farm together has is that we have an institutional investment team that has spent decades investing in ag, had seen it all. And, um, we use a lot of tech as well to rapidly and smartly think through all the interactions that happen in California is 200 plus water district.

Artem Milinchuk (20:04):

And for those who, don’t dunno, every water district is a legal entity that regulates in its geographic and administrative, uh, borders how water is allocated. And then guess what? Water, it doesn’t work in your administrative wave, it falls from the sky. There is a river or the snowfall. So you also have to think how it relates to different water rights on river basis, on canal basis on groundwater. So it is a fascinating ine, uh, system that we have to work through when we under. Right. So I don’t wanna, we could have a full podcast just on that. Suffice to say that if you’re investing in land, make sure that you trust, cuz you probably, like, I’ll just be, I’m not trying to talk down, but you probably will not on your own understand water. So you have to trust the people that are underwriting water for you.

Reed Goossens (20:54):

No, 100%. I think that’s, you’ve just given people a very small needle and tip of view of how complex water rights are across, not only across the US or across California, but across the globe. Right? And people go to war, uh, over oil and they go to war over water at some point in the future.

Artem Milinchuk (21:15):

So Egypt and Ethiopia, if you mm-hmm. Google them, they’re dealing right now with the dam. And then Australia actually had a very developed water market, very impressive for you guys. But, uh, it’s another big agricultural country. Mm-hmm. phenomenal, uh, property rights same as the United States, and yeah, quite a sophisticated water market, more advanced than California.

Reed Goossens (21:38):

Any tips or tricks just to, as you are looking at that trust factor, to know that the water’s buttoned up and you can trust it? Like what, what, what do you gotta look for?

Artem Milinchuk (21:49):

So often times just as a checklist, you wanna make sure that there is two sources of water, and that typically means, uh, groundwater and access to a river or a canal. But that is not always the case. Uh, for example, with Hackerman River in California, access to that river, it oftentimes can be as good as having two source of water. Um, the other thing you can do is, uh, check what water district you’re in, and then you can see if the water district has been, we’re talking about California has been certified or approved by the state under what’s called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of Sigma as gma. So you can see, uh, you know, is that, uh, what a district approved for that. But, uh, you know, Reed, when we launch our deals, and a lot of them are in California, we’re very comfortable, very polish in California, despite what the headlines sometimes scream about, oh, in the drought now, no one’s screaming that. Now all our reserv reserv bars are maybe at capacity. We need to flush them down the ocean. Um, we, we talk about what in our slide, we explain it really clearly. Um, and generally I think, um, you know, the, we feel quite confident in what our underwriting and then look, luckily farmland one farm, just as anything else, anything can happen, right? So diversifying across different crops, different geographies is something that we recommend, uh, and it’s a way to diversify from the water risk, but to diversify in general.

Reed Goossens (23:21):

Yeah. No, then that’s a great segue into my next question is you, in my intro, I think I mentioned 16 different crop types. So what crops do you like to focus on? For one, only yield. Mm-hmm. , but two, maybe it’s drought resistant and three, it might be sort of, uh, I, I, I think of the, I think of avocados, right? Like, I remember growing up in, I was born in the late eighties and, you know, avocados weren’t a thing. Now everywhere you see it’s like it’s avocado on toast. So like it, you know, crops come and go. Brussels sprouts obviously is another great crop that like, was historically hated by so many people, but now through different cooking Yeah. Standards, people love it. Right? So what crops do you choose and is there, do, do you have like a sort of a bo uh, an invest box to make sure you’re buying or investing in the right crop?

Artem Milinchuk (24:07):

Absolutely. So, um, and the, the boring answer is, it depends, but I’ll give the fun answer first. We do like corn and soybean like vegetables, and we like permanent crops that, uh, that have competitive advantages being grown in United States. So for example, almonds, 80% of almonds are produced in California and I’m in global production.

Artem Milinchuk (24:31):

Wow. There is a very strong marketing board because remember, uh, at the end of the day, there is a marketing component to it. You know, we, we had this get go, got milk campaign, and then recently I think Aubrey Plaza of the Parks and Recton other mm-hmm. fame, uh, went out and, you know, drinking anything but real melted, like eating cardboard or woods wood. Yeah, very fun. Um, uh, fights between different, uh, product groups. Uh, what’s important to remember is that agriculture is the oldest asset class. Food is not new. Uh, almonds, we’ve been eating them for thousands of years, walnuts, 5,000 years. So this is not something that’s radically different. We’re not creating crazy new foods. Um, so we are fairly bullish on a lot of different product types. Again, we focus on the ones where us has an edge. Um, so corn, soybean us is one of the lowest most producers, almonds I mentioned.

Artem Milinchuk (25:25):

Uh, apples us is phenomenal. There’s so many different variet of apple. Um, right now we’re looking at pecans, the new kind of, and the new almond. Uh, a lot of good things happening in pecans, very healthy, not hazelnuts. You what is, uh, becoming a large producer competing with Turkey, which is the biggest hazelnut producer in the world, competing both in quality as well as in how we treat our farm workers, how we treat our soil. There’s a lot of issues when we, you think about production hazelnuts in Turkey. Um, so every crop has its own story, uh, but again, the, uh, major trends are population growth, improving diets, right? You’re going from a diet that is very much soybean potato based, right? If we’re talking about poor countries to becoming a very diversified, rich diet, that’s much richer in that in fruits and vegetable, in, in, in citruses, you also move into organic, right?

Artem Milinchuk (26:19):

Because, um, look, I, I know I’m gonna ruffle some feathers, but I will say this like organic tastes better. And I’m not saying that, uh, growing conventional is bad. We grow tons of conventional, but, uh, there is certain, I think taste and health benefits, nutritional benefits and more organic ones. And then some other trends that are only emerging is, uh, regenerative farming, taking care of soil, using, uh, less than fertilizing pesticides so that you can more proactively integrate the local ecosystem. Um, I think there’s something about the soil and growing in a healthy vitamin soil that gives a certain flavor and high nutrient density to, to your produce. Um, so I guess that it’s boring, it depends, but I maybe if we do another one of this and we can dive deeper at all the different crops and geographies.

Reed Goossens (27:09):

No, it’s, it’s an interesting thing because, um, I do know again, basic fricking farming, uh, is that some crops are good to re germinate the soil when you’re bringing in other crops. And, and for those people, I’m not trying to get too geeky right now, but I happened to grow up riding horses in back in the day and next to sugar cane. And sugar cane was a gr you know, was, was a, a crop near where I lived. And I, I’m trying to remember what they did to regenerate the soil, but there’s, there’s different crops that you can bring in for a season or two seasons to regenerate the soil Yes, sure. To help, you know, produce a better quality product. And I’m, but, but you would know the better, uh, answer that. But what crops are they that you need to sort of in invest in that, that can help regenerate the soil to your point of like soil regeneration and, and water capture and all that sort of stuff.

Artem Milinchuk (28:01):

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a few different ways in which, uh, you can invest in the soil and, uh, it, it’s good both for, uh, of course the environment, but also as you can invest in the soil, it gets rich and richer, which means better yields, which means, uh, less fertilized and, and more, uh, sustainable long-term, uh, life of the farm. And typically our farms are 10 year, 11 year hold, sometimes longer. So we are definitely long-term investors. Uh, a few different things you can do. So cover cropping, uh, clover, sometimes this is, um, a planted pea to fix nitrogen rotating corn in soybeans, uh, up to plant soy, I think up to plant soybeans or corn. I don’t remember which one right now. But the other one then grows better. Yep. Um, then there’s, uh, small things you can do. For example, uh, we had an investor that was really passionate about bird migration, so leaving a few trees on your farm, right?

Artem Milinchuk (28:59):

It maybe gives you half an acre, but then the birds have nowhere to be, uh, sometimes around the edges of your farm, they’ll have little like ditches and canals, and that’s where all the little credits live. They looking at the environment and what is the local ecosystem and just, you know, designing your firm a little bit more to have more of that diversity. Um, it’s also just honestly, when you go there, it’s fun for the workers. If you have a, a little house there or something, which sometimes those farms do, right? Um, it’s just, it’s nice, uh, when you even drive by it. I think that’s something about remembering that, um, we’re humans and building to human scale. Uh, one of my side passions is urban architecture, which is kind of get balanced with my agricultural, uh, passion and, uh, the countryside. And I think that something about the poor philosophy of coming back to building a human scale when you go to old, you know, European cities, for example, uh, all, all cities in the us uh, the cobblestones, and it should feel somehow more human and bringing that back to farming while also keeping in mind, you know, you are still trying to feed the world and most people don’t have the wealth that us has.

Artem Milinchuk (30:14):

Uh, you gotta balance those two things. Um, yeah, but again, could be a whole separate podcast we’re happy to do on regenerative organic agriculture. , we,

Reed Goossens (30:21):

I’m sure we we’re going off a lot of tangents here, but they’re interesting tangents because it’s all around to your, your, your regenerative process. But let’s talk a little bit about the numbers here. You mentioned earlier, uh, I think you said six to 11% annualized. Was that correct or That’s correct. Uh, uh, for, for, for returns, are you getting cashflow from these deals out of the gate or does it take a couple of years to get the farm up, up, up to speed, uh, so to speak. And, and I think it’s, the second question is, are you trying to cultivate or invest in deals to help? Like, like we, we buy multiple multifamily properties to sell as a portfolio in the future. Individually, we, we wanna package them up. Do you do the same thing with farming and you buy individual parcels to then, you know, hopefully they may, the, the, the crops thatcompliment one another, um, or do you just sort of more one off and if the, if the, if the deal makes sense, you’ll invest in it.

Artem Milinchuk (31:11):

The short answer is all of them, but we invest in all kinds of different deals.

Reed Goossens (31:18):

So back to the cashflow. Do you cashflow from day one?

Artem Milinchuk (31:20):

It depends on the farm. Some farms, yes. Okay. Some farm can be a development deal that may take five, six years to cashflow. The returns on those deals are typically better.

Reed Goossens (31:30):

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Look at the end of the every show. Like I, I could speak to you for, for hours and hours, not to get you back, but, uh, I know you’re, you’re, you’re short on time here, but at the end of every show, we’d like to dive in the top five investing tips. You ready to get into it? Yes,

Artem Milinchuk (31:42):

Sir.

Reed Goossens (31:43):

Mate, your daily habits, tell me what’s the daily habit you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

Artem Milinchuk (31:48):

There’s one you have it I’ve developed that has been really good. And I don’t mean to sound like a bit of a bag, but uh, taking cold showers in the morning has been magical.

Reed Goossens (31:58):

awesome. You, I’m sure meditation would be on that list as well as well.

Artem Milinchuk (32:02):

Meditation. Um, that one is difficult. Uh, I’d love to say, um, I’m good at it, but I’m not, uh, that one is a struggle, although it seems like there’s a lot of benefits when I can stick with it. Uh, I started reading the Daily Story quotes by Ryan Foday. I think it’s a wonderful philosophy that everyone from course know the ancient Roman emperors to modern, uh, leader like General Mattis of the, you know, Marine and Secretary of Defensebeing, uh, it’s just something about, uh, do your best and make the chips fall where they may. And especially in farming where you cannot predict the weather, right? So many different things happen. You have to adopt a long term philosophical mindset.

Reed Goossens (32:43):

I love it. And one, that was one thing, one question I, we we’ll have to get into next time you get on the show is, is uh, you know, global warming and how that affects, but, but, but, but we’re at the lightning round. So question number two is, who’s been the most influential person in your career to date?

Artem Milinchuk (32:58):

I would say it’s been my, uh, my mentor, uh, my mentors and bosses at Ontario, teacher Suspension Club. And I can’t separate them, it’s three of them that I worked with, uh, ex extremely thoughtful, passionate and compassionate leaders, uh, in the investment space. They taught me like everything I know about investing and about approach to life. Um, so I’d have to pick the yeah, them.

Reed Goossens (33:23):

That’s great. Question number three is in what, uh, what is the most influential tool in your business? And when I say tool, it could be a physical tool, like a journal or a phone, or it could be a piece of software that you can’t run the business without. What is it

Artem Milinchuk (33:35):

Man? Yeah, I hate to say it, but Zoom is great , right? And I, I hate, I hate to love it, but we are fully remote team. We have to be because we’re in farming. And guess what? Farms are not located in one city and there’s actually not that many great investors in farming. So we have to, uh, make sure that people we hire in our team is everywhere. Um, but yeah, zoom has been really helpful.

Reed Goossens (33:59):

That’s awesome. Uh, question number four is, what’s been the biggest failure in your career? What’d you learn from that failure?

Artem Milinchuk (34:05):

I would say it’s not one necessarily big failure, but a lot of small failures in farm together around early days of starting not being able to hire the right people raising capital. So it’s just, uh, uh, you know, we come back to perseverance where, um, I think the, the biggest lesson is not to you failures as failures, but as feedback at end of the day, it’s either your idea is wrong, you did something wrong, the person is just not interested. But if you have a north star in for us, one that we’d never have to doubt, right? We’re helping to feed the planet, we’re helping to do it sustainably. We’re helping the farms grow food. Like, you never wonder if you’re doing something meaningful in life when you inform me. Uh, and so for me it’s always been the most that I know in my bones that we’ll be doing is valuable to society. And so the failures are just, well, this path didn’t work. Let me try another one. I come back to this, you know, Edison story. I found 10,000 different ways how light bulb doesn’t work. , uh, I think that’s the main lesson is just, uh, adjust and keep going.

Reed Goossens (35:13):

Yep. Pivoting all the time.

Artem Milinchuk (35:14):

Adapt and overcome.

Reed Goossens (35:15):

Yeah. No, and I think what you mentioned earlier about, you know, doing your best and, uh, whether the chips let the chips fall where they’ll fall because some things are sometimes outta your control. And as a entrepreneur, you want to control everything, right? As a, you know, part, particularly in investing space. But you, you, you can’t, sometimes the market will be the market and the environment will be the environment and you know, walls will break out across the globe and we can’t, you know, that will impact your investment and sometimes things are outta your control. And, um, so yeah, definitely that’s, that’s a great, great piece of advice for people. Um, mate, last question. Where can people reach you to continued conversation that will be in your sphere? Where do they go?

Artem Milinchuk (35:48):

Forum together.com. I would say pit stop number one. We have a ton of great education materials, webinars. You can chat to our client team as well, but love, welcome to Potential client. And then if you want to reach out to me personally, I’m at R tam, artm @Farmtogether.com. I still read all my emails. Uh, I, I think it’s, uh, endlessly fascinating what’ll be doing and it’s great to talk to people that are interested in farm investing or in working with us as farmers or something else in between. So yeah, our time at, uh, Farmtogether.com.

Reed Goossens (36:25):

Awesome stuff, my friend.Look, I just wanna thank you so much for taking some time outta your week to jump on the show. I just wanna reflect some of the things that I took away. I, I, I a in general have the sa same philosophy as you do about feeding the globe and doing it in a sustainable way. Obviously the, the world is growing at a rapid pace and, you know, farming is at the heartland of feeding this, this economy and this, you know, the, the food of the, the feed people of the world and some people don’t even have any food to, to, to, you know, to eat. And, and we come from such a country that is plentiful in its food and you are doing it in a way that is sustainable and, you know, you’re, you’re self aware of the things that you are trying to do.

Reed Goossens (36:59):

You mentioned earlier there was, uh, fuel, food, feed, and fiber, you know, making sure that you’ve got all the four, the four fours in your investment, but also understanding other things that outside the water conservation and or water rights, how does that affect the investment? You know, drought, which we didn’t even get into, but there’s other things about, you know, germination of the soil and, and how you can have long-term crops. And at the end of the day, investingintheus.com, you know, this hard asset, this physical asset, you know, is, is, is gonna be here. Cause you mentioned earlier like we’ve been farming for since the beginning of time, right? People have needed to eat and will never go away. So I think that’s, uh, really, really incredible and I encourage people to get over to farmtogether.com to check out, uh, your stuff. But did I leave anything out mate? And that’s a little summary.

Artem Milinchuk (37:39):

That was fantastic. I wish we had more time and we can do another one and a few months.

Reed Goossens (37:43):

I think we’re gonna have to, I think we’re gonna have to do another one part two and six months we’ll dive even deeper. But mate, again, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day and we’ll catch up very, very soon. Well, there you have another cracking episode jam packed with some incredible advice from art. Make sure you head over to farmtogether.com. Check out everything they’re doing over there. It’s a really incredible platform. If you have any interest in investing in farmland for the long-term future, uh, to put your money to work and, you know, really, really good tax haven, uh, in and around being at a physical asset. Cause it has the same benefits as real estate. So head over to farmtogether.com. Uh, if you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give it a five-star review on iTunes. And I wanna thank you all of again for taking some time to tune in each and every week to grow your financial iq, because that’s what we’re all about here on this show. And we’re gonna do it all again next week. So remember, be bold, be brave, and go give life a crack.