Monetary Matters with Jack Farley

Learn more about LandFund Partners: https://landfundpartners.com

Jack Farley speaks with John Farris, founder & CEO of LandFund Partners and former World Bank agricultural economist, about the tightening global food equation — and where the return actually comes from in farmland.

The setup: if the world stopped growing crops tomorrow, John says there are roughly 70 days of food in reserve, down from 110 a decade ago. Two billion more people, more protein per capita, less arable land, and productivity gains that have flattened out. Into that comes a Super El Niño that John's heat maps suggest will hit Brazil, Argentina, and India — the last of which depends on the monsoon to grow the world's most-consumed calorie.

That's the backdrop. The investment argument rests on three things.

The first is a value that sits on no balance sheet. Across most of the eastern US there are no formal water rights, so LandFund carries its water at zero. In the Colorado River states, where those rights did develop, they've compounded at north of 16% a year and outpaced the S&P 500 over three decades. John argues the same legal framework is coming to the Mid-South within ten years, pushed by the hyperscalers already knocking on his door for water offsets — and that when it arrives, a line item currently marked at nothing gets marked at something.

The second leg is convergence. When LandFund started in 2013, Midwest row crop farmland traded roughly 140% above comparable Mid-South ground; today the gap is 80–100%. John's argument is that the gap should be zero, and that it inverts: land with 300 years of water, 93% irrigation, and the ability to rotate between ten and twenty crops is worth more than land that is high-quality soil but weather-dependent — not less. Iowa bets on rain. He doesn't have to.

The third is operational. LandFund has required regenerative practices across its entire acreage since 2023, and John walks through the J-curve economics: $50–100 an acre and a couple of lean years up front, then lower fertilizer use, fewer passes across the field, less irrigation, and net income he estimates runs 30–40% higher than it otherwise would — which flows straight into rents, which flow into land values.

Also covered: the "dirty secret" of powering data centers using 100x the water they consume, riparian rights and what happens when states start metering overuse, what the One Big Beautiful Bill did to price floors through 2032, solar developers paying 3x farmland value for ground with transmission lines, and why US row crop farmland has been negatively correlated to both stocks and bonds.

Disclaimer:This episode is a fireside chat sponsored by LandFund Partners. Any data, statistics, or information discussed is for informational purposes only. This is not an offer to sell securities. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

About LandFund Partners: https://www.landfundpartners.com/#home

LandFund's piece on water rights: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2026/06/23/water-rights-the-invisible-asset-farmland-investors-are-beginning-to-price-in/

John Farris on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jofarris/

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Andrew Granato, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin, and Pranjal Drall, JD/PhD candidate at Yale, join Jack Farley to discuss their paper "Private Credit, State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers." Private equity ownership of life insurers has grown from roughly $23 billion in 2009 to about $700 billion by 2024, and Granato and Drall argue this has created a system that socializes losses even more sharply than federal deposit insurance does for banks. They walk through how state guarantee funds work: when a life insurer fails, its surviving rivals are assessed based on premium volume rather than risk, and in 44 states those assessments are recouped through tax credits, meaning taxpayers ultimately foot the bill without any vote ever taking place. The conversation covers how PE-linked insurers reallocate balance sheets into opaque private credit and affiliated loans, arbitrage ratings through firms like Egan-Jones and undisclosed private letter ratings, and use Bermuda "shadow reinsurance" to escape disclosure and capital requirements, with leverage reportedly running as high as 30-to-1 or 50-to-1. Jack and the guests also examine emerging run risk from funding agreement-backed notes (FABNs) and policy surrenders, using the Executive Life collapse as a historical precedent. The episode closes with the recent Guggenheim/Delaware Life/Clear Spring scandal, in which Mark Walter's insurers understated affiliated assets (including a loan to LeBron James) at 3% when the true figure was closer to 42%, prompting the sale of the Lakers to raise liquidity. Granato and Drall propose reforms including taxing opacity, banning private letter ratings, pre-funding guarantee funds on a risk-weighted basis, and making insurance holding companies partially liable for guarantee fund assessments. Recorded August 28, 2026.

Paper by Pranjal Drall and Andrew Granato, “Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers”:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7152239

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Jared Dillian, author of The Daily Dirtmap and the new book “The Awesome Portfolio”, returns to argue that the bond bear market is a sentiment story that has gone too far. Jared calls the market's obsession with deficits and inflation a "mind virus," notes that the $2 trillion deficit is only 6% of GDP versus 12% in 2010, and points out that everyone measures bond supply while nobody measures demand. He has moved a large share of his own money into long bonds as a three-to-five-year hold, calling 5.2–5.3% on 30s and 4.7% on 10s an incredible deal, especially with payrolls deteriorating, JOLTS and PMIs rolling over, and the market still pricing meaningful odds of a hike. On equities, Dillian walked the top 50 S&P charts and sees semis, healthcare, and financials topping — the broker-dealers look worst — while Intel and Oracle look like they're bottoming. He and Jack debate whether the semiconductor washout is over, disagree on where the leverage actually sits (Jack cites Vanda data showing retail positioning in semis near two-year lows), and Dillian warns that the Situational Awareness blowup was the Bear Stearns of this cycle, not the Lehman. He explains why he thinks AI is a bubble for a reason specific to this cycle: it's the first time in his career he's seen tech financed with debt rather than equity, at 6% coupons, for assets that go obsolete in three years. He also lays out his cautiously bullish gold view, why copper is his least favorite metal, why private credit still hasn't found a bottom, and the case for The Awesome Portfolio — equal weights in stocks, bonds, gold, cash, and real estate, which gives up one to two points of annual return but halves volatility and has never drawn down more than 12%. Recorded September 1, 2026.

Jared’s new book, “The Awesome Portfolio”: https://lnk.to/theawesomeportfolio

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Max Wiethe sits down with Capelight Partners founder Jeff Keller to dissect the massive Q3 technology sector divergence and the rapidly shifting landscape of AI investments. Keller breaks down why the market is rewarding near-term certainty in the tech sector and why he doesn’t like the "blow-off top" comparison between AI and the ARK implosion of 2021. He also gives his outlook for usage-based software vs. application software and explains the east coast vs west coast divide in assessing hyperscaler capex.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:13 Tech Sector Divergence

05:23 Cyber Infra Valuation Risks

08:09 Why Themes Beat Stock Picking

12:01 Valuation and Forecast Limits

17:35 Retail Crowding Warning

20:15 2021Parallels

23:33 Rising Rates and Funding the AI Buildout

27:28 Mag Seven Return Profile Shift

29:43 CapEx is Existential

35:17 Meta Breakdown

39:38 Investor Positioning Themes

41:34 Long Biased Long Short

43:55 What Would Break AI?

46:26 AI Echo Chamber Risk

49:06 Factor Awareness Extremes

51:55 Deleveraging July Playbook

56:58 Year End Watchlist

58:58 Anthropic IPO and SpaceX Effect

01:01:06 Conclusion

Sponsor: Teucrium Corn Fund (NYSE Arca: CORN):

https://teucrium.com/corn

Jim Wiederhold, Commodity Indices Product Manager at Bloomberg, joins Monetary Matters for a deep dive into what's really driving this commodities cycle. We start with the AI buildout and why it's quietly becoming one of the biggest demand stories in copper and silver, not just semiconductors. From there, Jim breaks down why central banks keep adding to record gold reserves, and makes the case for why silver could still have room to run. On energy, we get into how much sanctioned oil is still finding its way to market, why refined products have outperformed crude itself, and whether $200 oil is really back on the table. Jim also lays out the case for commodities as a genuine diversifier against stocks and bonds, pointing to how the asset class held up when equities didn't. We close on the "everything rally" — why nearly every corner of the commodity complex is moving at once — and a few overlooked names, from agriculture to industrial metals, that could be next. It's a wide-ranging conversation for anyone trying to understand where commodities go from here. Recorded August 17, 2026.

Pieces discussed:

“Midyear commodity review 2026, Bloomberg Professional Services”:

https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/insights/markets/midyear-commodity-review-2026-2/

Teucrium on X https://x.com/TeucriumETFs

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