Healing the Land and Prospering Through Holistic Management
The Savory Institute has joined with impact investors, Armonia, LLC and Level 3 Capital Advisors, LLC, to create Grasslands, LLC. Grasslands identifies attractive ranch real estate investments, raises investor capital to purchase the assets, and then engages in long term management contracts on the acquired properties. Grasslands was the subject of Capital Institute’s first Field Study in their Field Guide to Investing in a Resilient Economy. Allan Savory sits on the Advisory Board of Capital Institute, a think tank founded by the principal of Level 3 Capital Advisors that works at the intersection of sustainability and finance.
As the project grows, Grasslands foresees developing a “ranch real estate fund,” enabling investors to simultaneously participate in a portfolio of properties. The Grasslands team looks for properties that have the potential to provide triple-bottom-line impacts, including:
Major ecological benefits such as enhancing ecosystem resilience, sequestering carbon and building biodiversity.
Solid financial results through competitive annual cash dividends and low-risk, long term capital storage in the form of productive grassland.
Long-term stability for rural communities by providing employment opportunities for both experienced and up-and-coming land managers.
To date, Grasslands LLC and its investors have successfully acquired four properties, two in western South Dakota and two in eastern Montana. Total acreage under management is at 100,000 acres, and during the peak of summer these ranches support large herds of cattle all managed for land health under Holistic Planned Grazing ©. Grasslands is actively pursuing additional ranch purchases in the northern Great Plains, as well as opportunities in New Zealand and Argentina. Grasslands is also collaborating with third party monitoring entities to objectively measure ecological, social and economic changes.