January 21, 2025

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

Homestead Capital USA, a private equity firm specializing in farmland investments, has added Kudu Investment Management as a strategic partner. Kudu, which delivers permanent capital solutions to asset managers, made a passive, minority investment into Homestead, the terms of which the companies are holding close to the vest. As of early 2024, the Homestead Capital LLC Fund IV had attracted close to its target of $500 million to its coffers, garnering capital commitments of $460 million, per an SEC filing at the time.

With over $1.6 billion in equity and credit assets under management, Homestead is majority employee-owned with co-founders and co-CEOs Daniel Little, who was previously with JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs alum Gabe Santos at the helm. Of the partnership, Homestead’s Little said: “In Kudu we have found a partner who shares our conviction that investing in a diversified platform of U.S. agricultural assets has key benefits that appeal to a broad group of investors.”

Homestead invests in high-quality farmland across strategic regions, including row and permanent crops, lease types and farm operators, working mostly with small and mid-sized farmers to help bolster capacity and profitability. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based firm also serves as a lender to farmland operators.

Employing a value-add strategy, Homestead seeks to purchase farms, improve upon them and then over time sell them to the right buyer, which could be another farmer or institutional investor. The firm takes a two-pronged approach to farmland investing, combining a robust local presence with top-down portfolio construction, emphasizing components such as water availability and commodity price volatility. Fund IV, whose investors include public pension the State of Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds (CRPTF), made its maiden investment in 2023 into an Idaho potato, sugar beet, corn and hay farm.

Since its inception in 2015, Kudu has invested in 30 asset and wealth managers across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Kudu’s partner firms have invested a combined $128 billion on behalf of individual and institutional investors globally in conventional and alternative strategies and market segments.

Homestead’s Santos commented: “As investors, operators and lenders, we see many opportunities for growth. We have been looking for a partner with similar values and, with Kudu’s backing, we are well-positioned to accelerate our investments across the agricultural asset class.”

Kudu Chairman and Managing Partner Charlie Ruffel stated, “We are thrilled to partner with Dan, Gabe, and the Homestead team—in our view there was an instant cultural fit, and their skill in managing farmland investment is self-evident. And we believe that agricultural assets are poised to grow as investors allocate additional funds to this vital real assets market.”

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