He’s the top executive of one of the few companies connecting the world of finance to farming and agriculture, a real estate company that’s a landlord to tenant farmers around the country and allows investors to benefit from the farmers’ success feeding people.
The business is a culmination of the lifetime of experience for Pittman, one that embodies his belief that “everybody gets to eat” and is tied to Colorado because of his passion for the state’s iconic sport, skiing.
Pittman grew up around farms in Illinois, the son of a schoolteacher who partly owned a family farm. He worked on a dairy farm as a teenager and went to college at the University of Illinois to study agriculture.
His company, Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE: FPI), is one of only a couple of real estate investment trusts that focus on agricultural land.
The 25-employee company owns 160,200 acres in 17 states and generates money from the lease payments of tenant farmers working the land. The company’s land holdings are worth $1.1 billion. It also owns a couple of small cattle feedlots, a farm auction business and lends money to finance farm operations. …
Read the full profile of Farmland Partners’ CEO in the Denver Business Journal
