At The Money: Monetizing Dirt

Summary

Masters in Business – At The Money: Monetizing Dirt

Host: Barry Ritholtz (Bloomberg)
Guest: Brandon Zick, Chief Investment Officer, Saris Farmland Fund
Release Date: October 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode of "At The Money", Barry Ritholtz delves into the world of alternative land investing—specifically, how farmland and other "dirt" assets are monetized in ways far beyond traditional farming. Guest Brandon Zick, CIO of Saris Farmland Fund, shares insights from managing $2.2 billion in agricultural assets, discussing how various types of rights—mineral, timber, renewable energy, recreation, and more—unlock new streams of value and revenue for landowners. The conversation provides a comprehensive look at the investment case for land, surprising ways “dirt” is monetized, and why these trends are likely to intensify in the future.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Optionality of Land Ownership

[03:17] Brandon Zick:

• Farmland is compelling because it offers layers of optionality—beyond agriculture, there’s income potential from mineral rights, timber, recreational leases, and more.
• "When you own the real estate, when you own the dirt, you have a lot of optionality, starting with mineral rights." (03:22)
• Zick describes how his own family farm in NE Pennsylvania saw its value soar thanks to the Marcellus Shale discovery, demonstrating how “unknown” optionality can emerge with time.

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2. Monetizing Mineral Rights

[04:11-05:51]

• Mineral rights, especially in regions with oil and gas (e.g., Marcellus and Utica Shale), can produce cash flows far outweighing farm income, sometimes $4,000–$5,000 per acre per year versus land valued at $1,500–$2,000 per acre.

• Extraction is typically non-intrusive (via horizontal drilling/wells from property edges or adjacent lands).

• Regulatory frameworks (e.g., unitization) aim to ensure fair compensation among neighboring landowners.

  Notable Quote:

  • "You had land that probably would have transacted...for $1,500 to $2,000 an acre. It was generating 4,000 or $5,000 per acre in revenue per year. Wow, that's a lot."
    — Barry Ritholtz (04:48)

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3. Recreational Leases (Hunting & More)

[06:34-07:40]

• Landowners can generate significant off-season revenue by leasing land for recreation, especially hunting.
• There’s a robust rental market, often mediated through third parties that require insurance and enforce boundaries.
• "There's a lease being paid. And once someone's paying and paying for the insurance, they're enforcing the boundaries...which is great."
  — Brandon Zick (07:15)

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4. Renewable Energy: Wind and Solar Leases

[07:40-09:37]

• Wind farms bring incremental, low-footprint income to farmers ($$ typically 20–50 basis points of income), but permitting has gotten tougher due to aesthetic, land use, and environmental (bird migration) concerns.
• Solar projects, by contrast, are more “transformational”—they require more land but generate income several times larger than mere farming or wind could, and can be viable for smaller parcels.
• "What you tend to see on the solar side is revenue that could be anywhere from three to five times the total return of farmland plus wind."
  — Brandon Zick (08:47)
• Ritholtz humorously proposes using light or sound cues on wind turbine blades to protect migratory birds (09:37), to which Zick replies: "It seems like it hasn't been solved yet, so someone might be on it. But this could be an idea for you." (10:21)

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5. Biogas (Anaerobic Digestion)

[10:48-11:18]

• Not as lucrative for landlords directly, but farm tenants (especially dairy) can turn manure into energy, creating a "green" revenue stream.
• Particularly prevalent in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and New York.

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6. Timber as an Asset Class

[11:18-12:36]

• Timberlands are a major institutional asset class, especially in Canada, northern Michigan, and the Southeast US.
• Large-scale owners dominate, selling to end-users. High-value hardwoods add nuance, but overall, it’s a mature sector, less scalable than others.

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7. Conservation Payments and Carbon Credits

[12:36-15:30]

• While carbon sequestration and credits are frequently discussed, the panel is skeptical about their financial value for farmers—many sustainable practices (like cover cropping) are already common, and the "strings attached" often outweigh benefits.

  Notable Quotes:

  • "[Carbon credits:] The landowner and the farmer should probably get a bigger portion of the credit than the person who's transacting...But that's not how it works."
    — Brandon Zick (14:17)

• Conservation easements and wetlands banking (selling credits for land preserved as wetlands) provide more reliable options in specific regions with high development pressure.

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8. The AI/Data Center Boom and Land Values

[15:30-17:07]

• The growth of artificial intelligence has triggered a wave of data center construction in rural areas.
• Data centers seek sites with plentiful electricity (from grid or natural gas), fiber optic access, and water for cooling—electric transmission lines now boost, rather than depress, land values.
• "Now it's like being right next to the exit on the interstate. It's a huge bonus for that land."
  — Brandon Zick (16:19)
• Big tech (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta) are the main players, sometimes transforming entire midwestern communities.

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9. Legacy and Traditional Land Uses

[17:18–17:47]

• Manufacturing and distribution centers continue to be key non-farm uses.
• These uses can boost land values by 5x, 10x—even 20x over pure agricultural value.

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “They ain't making any more land. So this is likely to keep staying popular in the future.”
  — Barry Ritholtz (17:47)
• "If you don't own land, that comes through the rental market and there is a robust rental market."
  — Brandon Zick (07:09)
• “Now maybe from an agronomy standpoint, but if they're doing it anyway, you don't need to sign a contract.”
  — Brandon Zick, on voluntary vs. contractual conservation practices (14:35)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• [03:17] — Land as an "optionality-rich" real asset
• [04:11] — Mineral rights and Marcellus Shale example
• [06:34] — Hunting/recreation leases
• [07:40] — Wind & solar lease mechanics, impact, and economics
• [10:48] — Biogas projects and revenue
• [11:18] — Timber as an investment class
• [12:36] — Conservation, carbon credits, and regulatory realities
• [15:30] — Land value explosion due to data centers and AI boom
• [17:18] — Legacy uses: manufacturing/distribution centers

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Conclusion: Why Land Remains Attractive

Land’s enduring appeal—to farmers, institutions, and now tech giants—goes far beyond “dirt value.” The explosion of new revenue opportunities (energy, minerals, recreation, conservation, and especially data centers) gives landowners more ways than ever to “monetize dirt”—a phrase that captures the core of Brandon Zick’s thesis. As Ritholtz notes, they may never make more land, but the ways to profit from it keep multiplying.

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Transcript

[Barry Ritholtz]

Masters in Business is proud to be brought to you by A. Lange and Sona, masters of precision watchmaking since 1845. Every Lange timepiece is artisanally hand engraved, every movement assembled twice to ensure perfection, and every watch part meticulously finished, even the ones you can't see. A. Lange and Sona a dedication to craftsmanship and tradition that never stands still.

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[Brandon Zick]

Plants the fields and the spring that turned from green to bad harvest honey. Hold one up for the banker downtown.

[Barry Ritholtz]

They got him on his feet with handshake of money. Have you ever thought about what makes land valuable? It's much more than just a place to build a house or commercial building or place a farm. Real assets have become increasingly popular, accessed through alternatives like private equity funds. I'm Barry Ritholtz, and on today's edition of at the Money, I'm going to discuss alternative land rights investing. To help us unpack all of this and what it might mean for your portfolio, let's bring in Brandon Zick. He's the chief investment officer at Saris Farmland fund, managing about 2. $2 billion in ag assets. Saris not only looks at farmland, but a slew of additional rights that can help monetize dirt. As Brandon likes To say Saris was recently purchased by WisdomTree Investing. And full disclosure, I'm also an investor in Saris through my own personal investing. So, Brandon, you've been investing in and around farmland for decades. You grew up on a farm. What makes this kind of land a compelling real asset?

[Brandon Zick]

Thanks, Barry. I think when you look at farmland, one of the things that's so interesting is what are the optionality buckets that come with land? When we buy farms, generally we're thinking of this is going to be a farm for the long term. But when you own the real estate, when you own the dirt, you have a lot of optionality, starting with mineral rights. That's something that on the family farm, I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, no one knew what Marcellus Shale was, but over time, there's been a tremendous amount of value created through those mineral rights, well above the farmland value. When you think about other things that when you buy a farm, in many cases there's timber on the property that could be harvested selectively over time. There are opportunities to lease out land for hunting and other sorts of recreation to generate revenue. And then you start thinking about other optionality that can come too.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Well, before we go to other optionality, let's. Let's spend a little time with each of those. So when you say mineral rights and you referring to Marcellus Shale, which is natural gas made accessible by fracking, you're not giving up the farm because of the fracking technology. Those natural gas companies and oil companies can access that from a single point in the corner of the farm without disrupting the farmland. And they could go literally miles down to access how significant, how valuable are those natural gas leases?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, so it depends on the area specifically, but yeah, the great thing is that you're not strip mining a property. To your point, you can access it from a corner of the property or even lease it without any surface intrusion on your property. They have to access it from a neighbor's property. Who would allow that? And in the Marcellus Shield region, you had land that probably would have transacted almost any acre for $1,500 to $2,000 an AC. It was generating 4,000 or $5,000 per acre in revenue per year. Wow, that's a lot. That's completely changed. Even within our portfolio, you don't see any farms purchased in Pennsylvania because of the Marcellus and Utica Shale. There's so much cash flowing around, that land just isn't available at an attractive price from a farmland investment standpoint.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Let me ask you a Naive question about this. How do I as a farmer make maintain my mineral rights if the adjacent farm is sucking the natural gas out of the ground? Doesn't my natural gas then flow into that vacuum? How do you manage around that?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, so they try to put them together into units so that that doesn't happen. And there are rules around what you can and can't do, especially with these, as opposed to vertical wells that would be on one property. And depending on where it was on the property, you might actually be extracting from the neighbors without paying them. With these horizontal wells to go underneath, there are requirements that you have to be paid. You do see an interesting dynamic in Pennsylvania and New York, where it's not allowed in New York State, but if you own a farm on the Pennsylvania side of the highway there, that you're definitely generating a lot of revenue. There could be an argument that maybe some of that's coming from across the way. That's where regulation probably doesn't really meet up with the reality.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Let's talk about some other sorts of leases that farmland can generate. Reven, you mentioned hunting. What do you put up a gate and charge people on the way in? How do you charge fees for hunters and other recreational users if you own a couple hundred or a couple thousand acres of prime land?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah. So typically it's in the off season when the crops are off the field. But hunting in the Northeast and the Midwest is something that I didn't grow up doing. But it's a way of life for a lot of people. And everyone wants to have a specific place that they can go to to hunt their own land, a private place to hunt. And if you don't own land, they that comes through the rental market. And there is a robust rental market. When you drive through rural areas, you'll see postage signs on trees saying, this is like, you're not allowed no trespassing. Typically it's landowners or hunters who are paying for those rights who are posting that. And yeah, we go through third parties that will require insurance. There's a lease being paid. And once someone's paying and paying for the insurance, they're enforcing the boundaries such that we don't have to, which is great.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Let's talk about other leases. Renewable energy. I know you guys are big with wind turbines. The president may not love those, but farmers sure as heck seem to like it. What are the economics of putting up a wind turbine on a farm?

[Brandon Zick]

So wind has been around now for quite a while. You've seen 30 years worth of wind farm Construction and it's very incremental in nature to the farm, but it could add anywhere from 20 to 40 or 50 basis points of income, depending on the property. It takes up a very small footprint.

[Barry Ritholtz]

So you're still farming, you just have a couple of big turbines in the corner.

[Brandon Zick]

That's exactly true. I think when people started doing it, they thought, well, this is essentially free money. As long as you're fine with looking at wind turbines, which some people like, some people don't. But it was incremental and it was meaningful enough to farmers because they were still farming those properties. The thought process around that has changed a little bit. They're much different, more difficult to permit now because not only do they take up a huge footprint, a large wind farm could take up a very large footprint. So anywhere from 20 to 30,000 acres. There's a lot of neighbors involved there and there's also people who fight those wind farms on behalf of migratory birds. I think they're much more difficult to permit. Now what you tend to see on the solar side, which is significantly different, is much higher impact on the land. So they're taking up the majority of the footprint, continuing the farm. So the revenue has to be not just incremental, it has to replace the farm income and be transformational. What you tend to see on the solar side is revenue that could be anywhere from three to five times the total return of farmland plus wind. So it's much more meaningful and you can also do it on a much smaller footprint. So whereas you might need those 20 or 30,000 acres for wind, for solar, you can do it on 1500-2500 acres. So many fewer neighbors, maybe just one landowner, huh?

[Barry Ritholtz]

Really, really interesting. Another naive question. Migratory birds and wind turbines. How hard would it be to embed you generating electricity, to embed some form of light, even something in a range that's specific to birds, that maybe doesn't disturb humans or planes, or even just put a little high frequency sound cue. You know, you're spinning these blades through the, through the air. Should be interested, easy to generate some sort of noise. And I know there are lots of frequencies that don't disturb humans. The dogs aren't going to like it. But is it that really that difficult of a problem to solve?

[Brandon Zick]

It seems like it hasn't been solved yet, so someone might be on it. But this could be an idea for you.

[Barry Ritholtz]

That's my gift to the wind farming and landowning community. Just put a couple of reflectors up on the edge of the blades and the birds will be able to be able to see it. So we've talked about solar, we've talked about wind. What about projects like biogas? Is that a significant source of potential.

[Brandon Zick]

Revenue as a landowner? Maybe not as much, but we have farm tenants that own dairy farms that they have anaerobic digesters that are great for them. They can use some of the waste product from the cows and turn it into green energy and sell it back into the grid. That's something we've seen a lot of in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New York State. I think that'll continue to grow because it seems like the dairy industry is continuing to grow. More cows means more opportunity to do that.

[Barry Ritholtz]

This is a very heavy protein cycle of how people are consuming food. Less sugar and carbs, a whole lot more protein, or at least that's what it seems like. You mentioned timber. I know that there's a very specific form of agricultural husbandry with harvesting trees, planting. It's a very long term process. You're thinking in cycles of 10, 15, 20 years. How significant is timber?

[Brandon Zick]

So timber is a huge asset class, specifically in parts of Canada, northern Michigan and then in the Southeast. It's huge in terms of hardwoods and pulp woods. That's been in an institutional asset class or investment class for a long time now. You tend to see these really large owners owning hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres, selling to those very large end users. That is a little bit of a different beast. It's a very well developed investment structure where you tend to see maybe a little more nuances around some of the very high value hardwood, black walnuts and things like that. But that's something that I don't think is really scalable the way that some of the large timber investments currently are.

[Barry Ritholtz]

What about various conservation programs and things like carbon credits? How significant are those?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, so, I mean, there was a lot of noise around carbon sequestration and credits associated with that maybe two or three years ago. And we took a hard look at it because we own so much real estate. The idea of regenerative ag being great for the land and being able to benefit from that with a payment cycle was very interesting to us. What we found was the strings attached. And in many cases, farmers were already doing a lot of these practices. The people that we worked with, they were already using cover crops. The question is, can you get paid for that in a way that doesn't attach strings that jeopardize things later on?

[Barry Ritholtz]

What are cover crops?

[Brandon Zick]

Cover crops would be. So once your crop is harvested, you're planting a second crop there to prevent erosion, to maintain nutrients in the soil. So winter wheat, when people plant wheat, generally that is a cover crop that they're deciding in the spring, did it winter over well enough that they're going to harvest it or are they going to just leave it there and then eventually kill it and plant another crop into it? But it helps prevent erosion. Soil erosion helps maintain nutrients and moisture in the soil. So cover cropping is a great form of regenerative ag or sustainable agriculture that's been around for a long time.

[Barry Ritholtz]

And if they don't harvest it, and we talked earlier about some of the shows I watched, like Clarkson's farm and Harry's farm, they just essentially run the combine through it, shred it and then.

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, they can till it under, put it right in.

[Barry Ritholtz]

And that becomes a resource for the next corn.

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, exactly. More nutrients in the soil. So when we looked at those carbon credits, we thought, well, the land is the only means of production for generating this credit. The landowner and the farmer should probably get a bigger portion of the credit than the person who's transacting in a typical Wall street way. That's not how it works. We have not been a big mover on the carbon sequestration side because we don't think it's a real benefit to landowners financially. Now, maybe from an agronomy standpoint, but if they're doing it anyway, you don't need to sign a contract. So as we think about that conservation in terms of payments, you need a special structure to really benefit from that. There are folks that sell conservation easements. That's not something we do, but there is a group around that. One of the things that we've taken a harder look at is wetlands banking, because when there's development going on, specifically in the Midwest, a lot of industrial development, departments of transportation, as they expand highways, there's always wetlands to mitigate. There are a number of developed markets for creating a wetlands bank and then selling credits into that for development. That's something we've been taking a hard look at in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Really interesting. Let's talk about the use case for farmland. That is the single biggest shocker to me. Artificial intelligence. What's going on with these big data centers that seem to be popping up everywhere?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, I mean, they seem to really be targeting areas with great power resources and capacity on the grid, on the electric side, natural gas lines or natural gas fired power plants close by, fiber optic networks that are close by, and then Access to water for cooling, whether it's groundwater or otherwise. It seems like in the Midwest there's been a huge push into this. The old rust belt is done and there's new manufacturing coming in. And data centers seem to be the highest value that's being built. And it's being built at scale by a number of different players out there. Now it just seems as though land that you might have said 10 years ago, well, that was not the best land because it has a transmission line running through it now. That's like being right next to the exit on the interstate. It's a huge bonus for that land.

[Barry Ritholtz]

When you say big players, I'm thinking Microsoft, Google, Amazon. Who are the big players in this space?

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, those are the groups as well as Meta that seems like a real thirst for these single user data centers. They tend to target the places, those groups tend to target the places that are the most attractive and they're the most aggressive in trying to put them under contract. Even where we're based in South Bend, Indiana, there's two very large data center projects going on now, one by Amazon, one by Microsoft, that are transforming the area. And I don't think they'll be the last ones.

[Barry Ritholtz]

There are a variety of different land use options that can either generate revenue or drive appreciation. Did I forget any? Did we miss anything? Those are a lot of different things.

[Brandon Zick]

Yeah, those are the big ones. Traditional manufacturing, distribution centers. These are things that have been happening at least in the Midwest now for generations and it just continues the more that the economy continues to grow. That's one area where maybe farmland is a little more levered to the economy for some of these non farm uses. Because of that, these tend to be multiples of anywhere from 5 to 10 to 20 x farmland value. It can be very meaningful in the.

[Barry Ritholtz]

Market to wrap up. There are a number of things that make land valuable. Sure, it's a place to build a house or a commercial building or or to farm, to grow crops. But real assets have become increasingly valuable due to things like water rights, solar, wind, mineral rights, and now artificial intelligence data centers. It's a fascinating development. And they ain't making any more land. So this is likely to keep staying popular in the future. I'm Barry Ritholtz, you've been listening to at the Money Unblocked, Bloomberg Radio. Here's to the former. Thank you boys. Masters in Business is proud to be brought to you by Alanga and Sona, inseparable from the history of fine watchmaking and in Saxony since 1845 the Lange philosophy, defined by Walter Lange himself is simple. Never stand still. Their commitment to detail is so rare, so exquisite, that every watch movement is assembled twice the first time to ensure perfect mechanical function. Then it gets completely disassembled, fully decorated by hand and brought together again with meticulous finishing and hand engraving. The result? A timepiece built not just to keep time but to honor it. A langa ensona, a dedication to craftsmanship and tradition that never stands still.

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[Barry Ritholtz]

Love oh.

[Brandon Zick]

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[Barry Ritholtz]

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[Brandon Zick]

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[Barry Ritholtz]

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[Brandon Zick]

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