Leafy green and melons primary crops on acquired land
Gladstone Land acquires Arizona farms for $27.5m
Approximately 1,221 of the irrigated acres are subject to leases with the State of Arizona. Upon acquisition, the Company assumed lease agreements with the existing tenants, leading growers, processors, and marketers of export-quality agricultural commodities. The leases contain annual escalations throughout their respective remaining terms, which range from two years to nine years.
"We are excited to be adding four high-quality farms, such as these in Southwestern Arizona," said Bill Reiman, the Company's Managing Director for the Western United States. "While we already own several thousand acres in Arizona, this is a new growing region for us and one we have been targeting for years."
"Southwestern Arizona is home to a major winter growing region of fresh produce and is also an important early-summer melon production area. Leafy greens and melons will be two of the primary crops grown on these farms."
"This is our second large acquisition of 2017, and we are excited to enter into a new growing region," said David Gladstone, President and CEO of Gladstone Land. "These farms have a total of 19 wells onsite, giving them access to plenty of water, and this transaction allowed us to partner with yet another top grower. This is another acquisition that continues to improve the overall diversification within our farmland portfolio, which provides additional security to our shareholders."
"We also expect this acquisition to provide us with additional earnings, which we hope to be able to pass on to our stockholders in the form of increased distributions. We have now increased the distributions on our common stock six times over the past 29 months for a total increase of 45.0%, and our goal is to continue this trend. And the distributions we pay out to our stockholders have been fully covered by our funds from operations for the past six quarters."
source: nasdaq.com
