50,000 acres of Michigan farmland to sell to new owner eyeing energy, data center potential
Nearly 50,000 acres of farmland across Michigan by the end of 2025 would be under the ownership of a global investment firm seeking to capitalize on the interest in solar energy and data centers on agricultural land.
Under the recently announced deal, New York-based global asset manager WisdomTree Inc. (NYSE: WT) will pay up to $500 million to acquire all of the issued and outstanding equity interests of South Bend, Ind.-based Ceres Partners LLC, an investment manager focused on food, agriculture and water resources. Ceres also manages Ceres Farms LLC, which has more than $1.8 billion in assets under management via its farmland fund, which owns 174,000 acres spanning 545 properties in 12 states.
In Michigan, Ceres owns 187 parcels totaling 49,964 acres, of which 40,604 acres are considered tillable, according to the firm’s website. Most of the properties are concentrated in the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula, with the highest concentration of acreage on the southwest side of the state.
The deal, which WisdomTree expects to close by year end and be immediately accretive to earnings, includes $275 million in cash at closing and an earnout consideration of up to $225 million in 2030 if Ceres hits revenue growth targets.
The deal marks WisdomTree’s entry into the farmland assets market, which founder and CEO Jonathan Steinberg called “one of the largest yet most underpenetrated real asset classes in the U.S., offering both scale and scarcity. This acquisition expands our leadership in innovative, income-generating investment solutions, while strategically accelerating our entry into private asset markets with a high-quality, scalable platform.”
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Officials from Ceres Partners and WisdomTree could not be reached for comment.
In addition to investing in farmland, Ceres also acted as a private equity investor in a range of food and agriculture companies, including Hickory Corners-based Hop Head Farms LLC, which it acquired in 2014, two years after investing in launching the hop grower and processor.
In Michigan, Ceres also previously owned Plymouth-based Digested Organics, which it sold in 2023 to Mott Corp., an employee-owned filtration company based in Connecticut.
The Ceres-WisdomTree deal comes as the number of Michigan farms decreases while property values steadily grow. From 2017 to 2022, the number of farms in Michigan declined by 4.32% to 45,581 farms, while the land use dropped by 292,021 acres to roughly 9.5 million total acres in that time, according to the 2025 Q1 Michigan Agricultural Market Analysis from Peoples Company.
Meanwhile, the average market value of land and buildings per farm over the same period increased by 20.29% to $1.1 million in 2022, and 18.65% to $5,879 per acre, according to the report.
The report attributes the surge in farmland value to COVID-19, and the demand the pandemic caused for agricultural commodities and farmland investments.
“Despite potential headwinds, the state remains well-positioned to capitalize on its agricultural strengths and maintain its appeal as a secure and sustainable investment market,” the report states.
David Rapp, partner and senior vice president of investment at Grand Rapids-based Advantage Commercial Real Estate, whose specialties include vacant land deals, said he has seen an overall increase in investment activity in the farmland asset market in West Michigan in recent years.
He also noted an increase in the price point in the past decade in vacant farmland “across the board” in almost every sector, he said, and described Ceres as a “pretty aggressive” player in the market.
The most recent land value summary report from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service from 2024 shows U.S. agricultural land values increasing at a rate that has not been seen in nearly a decade. The 2024 report showed Michigan’s average cropland values were at $5.87 per acre, an 8.3% increase from 2023. The appreciation rate exceeded the national average by 4.7%.
Perry Vieth, founder and CEO of Ceres Partners, said in a statement that the deal with WisdomTree positions both firms to “capitalize on the next wave of growth in farmland — including solar, AI data infrastructure and water — with a shared commitment to innovation and long-term value creation.”
During an Aug. 1 quarterly earnings call with analysts, WisdomTree CFO Bryan Edmiston said that about one-third of Ceres’ farmland is under a solar lease option, which if exercised, could boost rental income three to five times on average compared to being used for farming, he said.
“The data centers also serve as a real opportunity,” Edmiston said during the conference call to discuss the company’s second quarter earnings. “Data centers could attract valuations 10 times the current mark of a farm, meaning selling a farm in the portfolio at 10 times today’s value.”
In the call, WisdomTree CEO Steinberg also characterized the data center potential as “lower probability, but high upside events that add attractive optionality to the investment profile.”
However, such development proposals have faced resistance in Michigan and elsewhere, particularly from nearby property owners who fear the loss of farmland and potential loss of rural character.
For example, Texas-based developer Related Digital currently faces landowner pushback over a proposed 2.2 million-square-foot data center in Saline Township in Washtenaw County, where officials have delayed a vote to rezone the property from agricultural to industrial, according to local reports.
While residents have voiced similar concerns over utility-scale solar projects, Michigan’s new clean energy law signed in 2023 includes a developer-friendly provision giving state regulators more authority in allowing renewable energy projects. Dozens of municipalities late last year filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the implementation of the new law.
From 2012-2020, 70% of utility-scale solar projects in the Midwest region were sited on cropland, marking the highest concentration among five regions of the country, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, the amount of total U.S. agricultural land directly affected by both solar and wind farms was relatively small at 0.05%, or 424,000 acres in 2020 compared with 897 million total acres used for farmland, according to the report.
A WisdomTree filing with the SEC identifies strategies around solar and data center development as a risk factor. While Ceres has solar lease agreements in place on some of its farmland holdings, “there can be no assurance that it will be able to identify, negotiate or execute additional opportunities on favorable terms or at all,” according to the quarterly report.
It goes on to cite “regulatory or permitting challenges, lack of demand, competition, technological or infrastructure constraints or insufficient capital investment” as potential barriers.
Rapp said any new solar or data center development would likely be a years-long or decade-long effort.
“If (WisdomTree) is in fact trying to ramp up some kind of renewable energy developments, I would assume it will take a long time for them to get their head around all of this and figure out which ones they can potentially do something on,” he said.
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