AcreTrader Review: Farmland Deals, 0.75% Fees and the Liquidity Trade-off

This section establishes what AcreTrader legally is, who owns it after the 2025 sale, and which regulator each part answers to, because the answer changed twice between 2023 and 2025 and most review pages have not caught up.

AcreTrader was founded in 2018 in Fayetteville, Arkansas by Carter Malloy, a University of Arkansas physics graduate who had been a managing director at the investment bank Stephens and part of the founding team of a global equity fund before he built a marketplace for fractional farmland (AcreTrader press kit; Arkansas Business). The business raised a $5M seed round led by RZC Investments in April 2020 (FinSMEs), a $12M Series A led by Jump Capital in March 2021 (PR Newswire), and a $40M Series B led by London’s Anthemis Group on January 11, 2022, extended to more than $60M on March 15, 2022 with Drive Capital (Business Wire): roughly $77M of venture money in total. Narya Capital, the fund JD Vance co-founded in 2020, was in the Series A and Series B.

The transaction that matters most for a reader in 2026 happened on August 12, 2025: Proterra Investment Partners LP, a Minneapolis private equity and private credit manager focused on the food and agriculture value chain, bought the AcreTrader platform outright. Terms were not disclosed. Proterra was spun out of Cargill’s Black River Asset Management on January 1, 2016 and reports more than $3.4B of assets under management (PR Newswire, August 12, 2025; Global AgInvesting, 2016 and 2025). At the sale the platform had funded more than 140 farmland properties, about 44,000 acres in 20 states (PR Newswire, August 12, 2025). The team operates inside Proterra under General Manager Rob Moore and Managing Director of Investments Drew Lipke. Malloy did not go with them. The seller was Acres.com, the land-data and mapping subsidiary AcreTrader launched, which continues as an independent company under Malloy with more than 60 staff (PR Newswire, August 12, 2025; Arkansas Business, August 2025). In plain terms: the founder kept the software company and sold the investment business to a private equity firm.

The three legal entities you deal with

• AcreTrader Management, LLC is an investment adviser registered with the SEC (CRD 309641) and the manager of every farm LLC sold on the platform (SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, 2026). It collects the 0.75% a year, decides when a farm is sold and signs the leases. We could not retrieve its Form ADV figures for regulatory assets under management; treat the AUM as unverified at publication.
• AcreTrader Financial, LLC was a FINRA-member broker-dealer (CRD 320820) announced on March 30, 2023 as a way to arrange private placements for farmers as well as investors (GlobeNewswire, March 30, 2023). BrokerCheck shows the registration ran from February 8, 2023 to August 2, 2024 and that the firm is no longer registered (FINRA BrokerCheck, 2026). Review sites that still call AcreTrader a broker-dealer are wrong.
• Offerings are sold through North Capital Private Securities Corporation, an unaffiliated SEC-registered broker-dealer and FINRA member; your subscription money sits in escrow there until the farm’s funding target is met (AcreTrader General Risk Statement, 2026). Each farm is sold under Regulation D, Rule 506(c), which permits general advertising in exchange for a verified accredited-investor check on every buyer.

In one sentence: AcreTrader is an issuer-sponsor and registered adviser that finds farms, forms one LLC per farm, sells the units to accredited investors through a third-party broker-dealer, manages the farm for a fee and decides when to sell it; since March 2026 it also runs a pooled fund that buys the same farms.

Why the ownership matters

Before August 2025, the conflict at AcreTrader was the ordinary sponsor conflict: the manager earned a fee on your capital and a fee on the exit, and it priced the farm you bought. After August 2025 there is a second layer. In March 2026 Proterra launched the Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund LP, an open-ended private REIT, using the AcreTrader team and deal flow, and Lipke told Agri Investor that the fund will take at least a 50.1% stake in any future asset listed on AcreTrader that fits its mandate (Agri Investor, 2026). On the farms that go up on the platform from 2026, the retail LLC you buy into is expected to be the minority owner, beside a fund the same company manages. Who prices the farm, who decides when it sells and at what price a stake moves between the two are questions with one answer, and it is Proterra. The April 2026 sale of 57 platform farms happened within weeks of the fund’s launch.

This section walks the money from your bank account to a field in Illinois and back, and marks where AcreTrader gets paid.

Eligibility and onboarding

You must be an accredited investor: $200,000 of income ($300,000 with a spouse) in each of the last two years, or $1M of net worth excluding your primary residence, or a qualifying professional licence (SEC Rule 501; AcreTrader FAQ, 2026). Because the offerings use Rule 506(c), AcreTrader cannot take your word for it; you upload a letter from a CPA, attorney or broker, or tax documents, and the check is repeated once it lapses. You can invest as an individual, through an LLC or trust, or through a self-directed IRA; an integration with Alto IRA allows farmland investments from a $10,000 minimum inside a retirement account (AcreTrader learning centre; Alto, 2026).

Sourcing and pricing

The team underwrites soil, water, tenant quality and local rents, negotiates a purchase price with the seller, and forms an LLC to hold the single parcel. Row crop farms in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas and the Red River Valley make up most of the menu; permanent crops (almonds, citrus, avocados, pistachios) are a minority, and in 2021 the platform sold two Australian orchards (Portfolio Performance Snapshot 2022; Benzinga, September and November 2021). The price is set by the sponsor’s negotiation with the seller, not by an auction among investors; the seller pays AcreTrader a 5% commission, which AcreTrader describes as an ordinary brokerage fee and which is therefore built into the price the LLC pays (Physician on FIRE; Passive Income MD, 2023 to 2026).

The offering and what you own

Each farm goes up as a Rule 506(c) private placement with a private placement memorandum, an operating agreement, a target hold, a projected cash yield and a projected net IRR. The minimum per offering is set by the sponsor and has run from about $10,000 to $25,000, occasionally lower and sometimes above (WalletHacks; Retire Before Dad, 2026). Popular offerings close in hours: the Mareeba avocado orchard raised $8.4M in 75 minutes in November 2021 (Benzinga). You own membership units in a limited liability company that owns one farm. You do not own acres, you cannot walk the land as an owner, and you have no say in the lease. The LLC is taxed as a partnership, which is why you receive a Schedule K-1 rather than a 1099. The manager is AcreTrader Management, LLC, which cannot be removed except as the operating agreement provides.

The lease, the tenant and the cash

The farm is leased to a local operator, almost always under a cash rent lease, sometimes with a flexible component tied to yields or prices. AcreTrader Management collects the rent, pays property tax and insurance, monitors the farm and distributes net income to members once a year, in December, after harvest rent is in (AcreTrader Portfolio Performance Snapshot 2022; Physician on FIRE). The platform’s target for row crop cash yield has been 3% to 5% a year. Its 2021 snapshot reported an aggregate actual net yield of 2.7% across 47 properties against 2.4% expected (Portfolio Performance Snapshot 2021; unverified at publication), and investors report distributions inside the 3% to 5% band in later years. Buy a farm late in the year and you will not see a distribution that year.

Valuation and reporting

There is no NAV. AcreTrader posts periodic updates on the crop, the tenant and local land sales, but it does not mark the farm; your account balance shows what you paid until the farm sells, so you learn what it was worth on the day it is sold and not before.

The exit

The manager decides when to sell, usually inside the stated 5 to 10 year target, sometimes to the tenant under a purchase option written into the lease (Northland Organic Farm in Minnesota, January 2026; Goose Creek Farm in Idaho, late 2025), sometimes to a neighbouring farmer, and in April 2026 in one bulk transaction of 57 farms. On the sale, AcreTrader Management takes a 5% disposition fee, the LLC pays closing costs, the remaining proceeds are distributed and the LLC is dissolved (AcreTrader Regulation Best Interest Disclosure; Passive Income MD, citing offering documents).

Where AcreTrader gets paid

Four places: the seller’s 5% commission at purchase, up to 2.5% of formation costs at closing, 0.75% a year on your investment, and 5% of the sale price at exit. There is no carried interest, which is the platform’s best feature.

This section lists what an investor could buy from AcreTrader as of September 17, 2026, what has closed, and what is new.

Single-farm offerings

The core product since 2019 remains the one-farm LLC, with minimums generally $10,000 to $25,000 (Retire Before Dad; WalletHacks, 2026). Row crop offerings have carried target net IRRs of about 7% to 9% and cash yields of 2% to 5%; permanent crop offerings have advertised a wider 6% to 14% band (AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026, summarising offering pages). Target holds are five to ten years. We could not count the offerings live on the day of writing because the listing pages are behind a login and the network proxy blocked them; the number live at September 17, 2026 is unverified at publication. The company’s last published property count is the “more than 140” in the August 2025 acquisition release. From 2026 the retail LLC on a new listing is expected to hold a minority stake beside the fund described next.

Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund LP

The new product. A Form D was filed on February 19, 2026 for Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund LP (CIK 0002106807), a Delaware limited partnership offering under Rule 506(c) that invests through Proterra AcreTrader REIT LLC, an entity set up to qualify as a real estate investment trust (SEC Form D, via AltStreet and NASAA EFD). The launch was announced on March 12, 2026 (PR Newswire), and AcreTrader LLC is the fund’s investment manager (acretrader.com fund page, 2026). What the company has said publicly: it is open-ended, holds a diversified pool of investment-grade US farmland leased to professional operators, targets lease income plus appreciation, issues a single K-1, and has a “modified redemption structure” with a 24-month lockup and a quarterly path to liquidity after it (Drew Lipke, American Farmland Owner, May 2026; AgInfo, 2026). Agri Investor reported that the fund is seeking about $300M, that it will take at least a 50.1% stake in future AcreTrader listings that fit its mandate, and that the company expects to put 30 to 60 farms into it over several years (Agri Investor, 2026). What it has not said publicly, and what we could not verify: the minimum, the management fee, any incentive fee, the redemption cap and the valuation method. Read those sections of the private placement memorandum before you consider it.

The April 2026 bulk sale

In early April 2026 AcreTrader announced the disposition of 57 farmland assets across 13 states, about 16,000 acres producing more than ten crops, funded on the platform between 2019 and 2024, generating more than $135M in investor distributions, with farmers on active leases keeping operational control. The same release counted 75 realisations since inception and more than $189M in total distributions (PR Newswire, April 2026; Talk Business & Politics, April 2026). It did not name the buyer or give an IRR for the package, and the local press paired it with the fund launch under one headline. Whether the buyer was the new Proterra fund, another Proterra vehicle or an outside institution is the single most important unverified fact in this review.

What has closed

AcreTrader Financial, the in-house broker-dealer, withdrew its registration on August 2, 2024. The Australian orchards are gone. AcreTrader launched its first international offering in September 2021, the Burnett River Citrus Orchards in Queensland, which raised $7M in an hour, and followed it in November 2021 with the Mareeba Avocado Orchard, 415.5 acres across four properties, which raised $8,365,000 in 75 minutes at a $35,000 minimum and a 12.8% target net annual return over a 10 to 12 year hold; both were sponsored by Aqua Ceres LLC (Benzinga, September and November 2021). Both were later sold under receivership below their debt, according to investor communications quoted by reviewers (AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026; Trustpilot, 2025 to 2026).

This section counts every dollar that leaves your money between the wire and the final distribution, then runs $25,000 through seven years.

The stated fees

AcreTrader’s Regulation Best Interest disclosure (PDF on acretrader.com, retrieved via search September 2026), repeated in its FAQ and investor reviews, states three fees.

1. An annual fee of 0.75%, paid to AcreTrader Management, LLC, described as covering farmer relations, accounting, reporting and investor communication (Reg BI disclosure; The College Investor; AcreTrader FAQ, 2026). Reviewers who have read the offering documents describe it as charged on the amount invested, not on a floating land value, so the fee does not grow with appreciation (Passive Income MD). We could not confirm the base from the documents themselves; treat “0.75% of invested capital” as the working assumption.
2. A closing charge at investment. The disclosure allows up to 2.5% reimbursement of formation costs advanced to the LLC, taken at initial closing (Reg BI disclosure). Investors report the effective figure as about 2%, so a $10,000 subscription starts as roughly $9,800 of farm equity (The College Investor, 2026; WalletHacks, 2026). Benzinga puts the “one-time upfront fee” at 2% to 5% (2026); the higher end appears to fold in the seller-paid commission, which is in the price rather than on your statement.
3. A 5% disposition fee “at termination date”, charged to the LLC on the sale price (Reg BI disclosure; Passive Income MD). AcreTrader’s materials emphasise that the 5% at purchase is paid by the seller, which is true; the 5% at exit is paid by you, because you own the LLC that pays it.

The embedded costs

• The seller’s 5% commission at purchase. Any seller who pays a 5% commission prices it into the ask, so the LLC buys at a price that includes AcreTrader’s brokerage fee. It is not a fee on you in form. It is in substance.
• Property-level costs: property tax, insurance, drainage and irrigation maintenance, legal, accounting and K-1 preparation, all out of rent before the distribution, which is why a 3.5% gross rent yield becomes a 2.7% to 3% net distribution.
• Sale closing costs: title, survey, legal and any outside broker, on top of the 5% disposition fee.
• IRA custody: through Alto, a $37.50 quarterly account fee below $30,000 of invested capital or $100 above it, plus $10 per integrated-partner transaction and $75 per private investment (Alto fee schedule, 2026, via AngelInvestorsNetwork).
• Wire and account fees: none stated by AcreTrader; your bank’s outbound wire fee applies.
• Leverage costs on the minority of farms that carried debt. The Australian orchards and the Middle River almond ranch did, and their debt is why the equity was wiped out or halved.

Worked example: $25,000 in a row crop farm for seven years

Assume a $25,000 subscription to a Midwestern row crop offering with a 2% closing charge, a gross cash rent of 3.5% of the farm’s cost, land appreciation of 4.5% a year, a 0.75% annual fee on invested capital, a 5% disposition fee and 1% of sale closing costs. Rent plus appreciation gives roughly the 8% total return AcreTrader has advertised for row crops; the 4.5% is close to the 4.7% rise in US cropland values in the year to August 2025 (USDA NASS, Land Values 2025 Summary, August 1, 2025) and well above the institutional index in 2025, so this is the platform’s case, not ours.

• Wire: $25,000. Closing charge 2%: $500. Farm equity: $24,500.
• Rent: 3.5% of $24,500 = $857.50 a year. Annual fee: 0.75% of $25,000 = $187.50. Net distribution: $670 a year, or 2.68% on your $25,000, paid each December. Over seven years: $4,690.
• Land at exit: $24,500 × 1.045^7 = $33,341. Disposition fee 5%: $1,667. Closing costs 1%: $333. Net sale proceeds: $31,341.
• Total returned: $4,690 + $31,341 = $36,031 on $25,000. Net IRR: 5.7% a year.
• Total fees paid to AcreTrader and at closing: $500 + $1,312.50 + $1,667 + $333 = $3,813, or 15% of your original capital, before the seller’s commission embedded in the purchase price.

The same farm with no platform fees at all would have produced a 7.6% IRR, so the stack costs about 1.9 percentage points a year on a farm that meets its targets. That is a low toll for a private real asset; Farmland LP’s 2% a year plus 20% carry over a 6% preferred return would cost more on the same farm, and so would FarmTogether’s 1% to 2% plus a performance fee. The toll rises sharply on a farm that does not appreciate: with flat land values the same $25,000 returns $27,720 and the net IRR falls to about 1.6%, while the fees stay at roughly $3,300.

For the liquid comparison, take Gladstone Land (LAND), the listed farmland REIT, at $9.54 on September 17, 2026 with a 5.95% yield on its $0.0467 monthly dividend (StockAnalysis, September 2026). One total-return series puts $25,000 invested five years earlier at about $19,200, a loss of about 5% a year, and its ten-year return at 3.74% a year against 12.56% for the S&P 500 (FinanceCharts, September 2026; unverified at publication). Farmland Partners (FPI) yields about 3.2% on a $0.36 annual dividend (July 29, 2026 declaration). Neither REIT charges an entry or disposition fee, both sell in seconds, and both have made less money than AcreTrader’s announced exits. That is the trade: a better historical return in exchange for seven years without an exit.

This section sets the advertised returns beside the announced exits and the reported losses, and explains the gap.

What AcreTrader claims

The platform has advertised total returns of 7% to 10% a year for row crop farms, made of a 3% to 5% cash yield and land appreciation, with a wider 6% to 14% range on permanent crops (Physician on FIRE, quoting the platform; AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026). Its November 14, 2024 release said that of 141 properties managed by AcreTrader Management, 15 had gone full cycle, every one above its initial target, in a range of 9.4% to 30.3% net IRR, with more than $25M returned in principal, appreciation and rent (GlobeNewswire, November 14, 2024). By April 2026 the claim had grown to 75 realisations and more than $189M of total distributions (PR Newswire, April 2026). All of these are the company’s unaudited figures, and “returned to investors” includes return of principal.

What has been realised, exit by exit

• Iowa row crop farm, one of the earliest offerings, sold to the tenant in 2021 at a 22% IRR against an 8.5% projection; the 2021 snapshot also reported three completed cycles and roughly $1.4M of distributions across 2,113 payments that year (AcreTrader newsroom, 2021).
• End of 2022: the fourth disposition was announced on September 21, 2022; the portfolio stood at 128 farms in 18 states plus Australia, and 6,218 distributions went out across 78 active investments in December 2022 (GlobeNewswire; Portfolio Performance Snapshot 2022).
• Quitman County, Mississippi, 236 acres, funded June 2020, sold June 2023: about 15.8% net IRR against an 8.5% target (GlobeNewswire, August 15, 2023).
• Four Illinois row crop offerings, 473 acres, funded 2020 and 2022, aggregated and sold to one buyer: preliminary 12.75% IRR against 7.8% to 8.7% targets (GlobeNewswire, October 11, 2023).
• Huntington County, Indiana, 169.3 acres held by Acretrader 133, LLC, subscribed November 2020, closed July 2024: 18% net IRR, $2.4M net cash to investors, the fifteenth exit (GlobeNewswire, November 14, 2024).
• Northland Organic Farm, Red River Valley, Minnesota, funded September 2020, tenant exercised its purchase option in January 2026: 11% net IRR, 1.8× multiple over about five years and four months (PR Newswire, February 25, 2026).
• Goose Creek Farm, 390 acres in Cassia County, Idaho, funded November 2022, tenant exercised its purchase option in late 2025: bought at about $14,990 and sold at $17,500 per tillable acre, a 16.7% price gain in about three years and 13.8% above the platform’s last internal valuation; no IRR published (PR Newswire, May 5, 2026). This is the only announced exit from a 2022 vintage.
• 57 farms, 13 states, about 16,000 acres, funded 2019 to 2024, sold in one package in spring 2026 for more than $135M of distributions; no IRR published (PR Newswire, April 2026).

What has been lost

The releases do not mention the failures. Investors do.

• Australian avocado and citrus orchards. The Burnett River citrus and Mareeba avocado offerings of 2021 were leveraged permanent-crop deals sold at a 12.8% target return. According to investor communications quoted by reviewers, poor early avocado yields, higher cultural costs after the 2022 inflation surge, storm damage and higher interest rates produced operating losses; orchard values fell; and the assets went in a forced sale at a valuation below the large debt burden, the phrase that means the equity was wiped out (AcreTrader investor updates as quoted by AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026). Several Trustpilot reviewers describe six-figure total losses and say the platform has offered no remedy (Trustpilot, 2025 to 2026; unverified customer reports).
• Middle River Almond Ranch, San Joaquin County, California. Farm input costs ran 50% to 100% over the model, borrowing costs tripled, and almond sales came in about 40% below the modelled price; the ranch sold for more than its purchase price, but after debt, interest and sale costs investors received $1.202M on $2.8M, about 43% of their capital (WalletHacks, “What happens when an AcreTrader farm fails”, citing investor documents; AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026). AcreTrader announced the funding of a 78-acre California almond farm in early 2020 (PR Newswire, 2020); we could not confirm it is the same farm.

The gap and why it exists

Three things explain the distance between “every exit beat its target” and “I lost my principal”.

First, selection of what gets announced. Sales that beat target get a press release; receiverships get an investor letter. The 9.4% to 30.3% range describes the fifteen farms sold voluntarily by November 2024, not the assets sold by a receiver. By the company’s April 2026 count there have been 75 realisations; we have individually published IRRs for five.

Second, row crops and permanent crops are different businesses. A cash-rented corn farm has a tenant who bears the crop risk and pays rent in advance; the LLC’s worst year is a flat one. An orchard LLC that operates the trees and carries debt bears the price, weather and interest-rate risk together. The NCREIF Farmland Property Index returned 0.20% in 2025 (income 3.05%, capital −2.80%); inside it, annual cropland returned 3.52% and permanent cropland −10.2% (income 1.7%, capital −11.8%), its worst year since the index began (NCREIF 2025, via AgIS Capital, March 2026, and FarmTogether). The long-run average is reported at about 9.8% a year (AgIS Capital, March 2026; unverified at publication). AcreTrader’s realised winners are all cash-rented row crop farms; its realised losers are leveraged permanent crops.

Third, vintage. Five of the six announced exits were bought in 2019 or 2020 and sold into a market where USDA cropland values rose from about $4,100 an acre to $5,830 by August 2025 (USDA NASS, Land Values 2025 Summary). A farm bought in 2022 or 2023 at the top of that run faces the flat market NCREIF recorded in 2025. The one 2022-vintage exit, Goose Creek in Idaho, gained 16.7% on price because the tenant exercised a fixed option, not because the market moved; it has no published IRR, and no 2023 or 2024 vintage has exited.

This section explains how you get out, and it is short because the answer is that you wait.

The lockup

There is no redemption. Your units are restricted securities in a private LLC. AcreTrader’s documents allow a private transfer to another accredited investor after one year, subject to the manager’s consent and the securities-law restrictions on resale of Rule 506 securities (AcreTrader FAQ, as summarised by Retire Before Dad, 2026). Finding that buyer is your job; reviewers describe it as selling to a friend or relative.

The secondary market that has not arrived

AcreTrader has described a “low-volume marketplace” for years. As of September 2026 it had not launched (AngelInvestorsNetwork, 2026; Retire Before Dad, 2026). No platform-run secondary trades, bid-ask data or fee schedule exist. If you need the money inside the hold, the only exits are a private sale you arrange yourself or a farm sale the manager decides on.

Realised time to exit

Announced exits ran from about two years (the Iowa farm, bought 2019 and sold 2021) to five and a half years (Northland Organic, September 2020 to January 2026), with the Indiana, Mississippi and Idaho sales at three to four years. The stated target is five to ten. The April 2026 bulk sale took farms funded from 2019 to 2024 out in one transaction, so some investors were out inside two years and some after seven. The timing is the manager’s, and since 2025 the manager’s parent has its own fund to think about.

What happens if the platform fails

Each farm sits in its own LLC with its own deed, so a failure of AcreTrader Management would not put the land in a creditor’s hands. The operating agreement governs how a manager is replaced, and since August 2025 Proterra, a $3.4B manager, stands behind the entity. The other side of that: if Proterra decided the retail channel was not worth running, the path of least resistance would be to sell the remaining LLC farms into its fund. The April 2026 transaction shows the mechanism exists.

The new fund’s liquidity

The Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund promises a quarterly path to liquidity after a 24-month lockup, with redemptions matched to inflows. A fund that pays redemptions from new subscriptions is a queue, and a queue is only as good as inflows in the quarter you want out. The large non-traded REITs that limited withdrawals in 2022 and 2023 had the same design.

This section sets out the forms you receive, the character of the income, and the wrappers that work, because farmland through a partnership LLC is taxed differently from a REIT and the differences are worth real money.

The forms

You receive a Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) from each LLC each year. Investors have reported K-1s arriving in February in a good year (Physician on FIRE), which is early for a private partnership; the LLC’s statutory deadline is March 15 with an extension to September 15, so plan for the possibility of filing an extension. One farm, one K-1: eight farms is eight K-1s. The new Proterra fund advertises a single K-1 as a feature, which tells you the company knows the paperwork is a cost.

The character of the income

• Annual distributions are rental income from real property, reported on the K-1 as net rental real estate income. Rent is generally passive income under Section 469, so losses from one farm can offset income from another passive activity but not your salary. One investor reports that roughly 70% of a typical distribution was sheltered by depreciation and expenses, leaving about 30% taxed as ordinary income (Retire Before Dad, quoting his own K-1s; unverified at publication). Land is not depreciable; the shelter comes from land improvements such as drainage tile, irrigation, wells and grain bins, depreciated over 15, 7 or 10 years under Section 168, and from property taxes, insurance and the 0.75% fee.
• Gain on the sale of the farm is gain on Section 1231 property held more than a year, which nets as long-term capital gain: 0%, 15% or 20% federal, plus the 3.8% net investment income tax under Section 1411 for high earners. Depreciation taken on improvements comes back as unrecaptured Section 1250 gain taxed at up to 25%. The 28% collectibles rate does not apply; farmland is not a collectible.
• Qualified business income: cash-rent farmland qualifies for the Section 199A 20% deduction only if the activity is a trade or business or meets the rental real estate safe harbour in Revenue Procedure 2019-38 (250 hours of rental services a year); a single cash lease will usually not qualify. Ask the K-1 preparer.

State filings

The farm is where the income is sourced, and Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi and Arkansas all tax non-residents on farm income earned there. Most AcreTrader LLCs handle this with composite returns or withholding, but a portfolio across six states can mean six non-resident returns in the year a farm sells.

1031 exchanges

Farmland is like-kind to other real property under Section 1031, and a farmer selling an 80-acre parcel can defer gain by buying another. An AcreTrader unit cannot be used for that: Section 1031(a)(2) excludes interests in a partnership from like-kind treatment, and an LLC taxed as a partnership is a partnership for this purpose. You cannot 1031 into AcreTrader units, and when the LLC sells the farm you cannot 1031 out; the gain is recognised in the year of sale. The platform acknowledges that fractional exchanges need a Delaware statutory trust structure, which it does not use, and says it can help investors buy whole farms that would qualify (AcreTrader learning centre, 2026).

IRAs and UBTI

A self-directed IRA can hold the units, and AcreTrader’s Alto integration makes it a $10,000 button. Two cautions. First, rent from unleveraged land is excluded from unrelated business taxable income under Section 512(b)(3), but if the LLC borrows, the share of income and gain attributable to the debt is unrelated debt-financed income under Section 514, taxable inside the IRA and reported on Form 990-T once UBTI exceeds $1,000. The offerings that went wrong were the leveraged ones. Second, the IRA loses the depreciation shelter and converts a 20% capital gain into ordinary income on withdrawal, so a Roth is the only wrapper in which the maths reliably improves.

This section starts with the risk that ends the investment, then gives the dated record.

The risk that ends the investor

On a single-farm LLC the fatal risk is leverage plus an operating crop. A cash-rented row crop farm with no debt cannot go to zero unless the land does; a leveraged orchard can, and on AcreTrader two did. The second is valuation at a related-party sale: a farm sold by the manager to a vehicle the manager’s parent also runs, or co-owned with it from day one, is priced by the parent, and the outside members find out afterwards. The third is platform insolvency stranding the LLCs without a manager, mitigated here by the deed-level structure and by Proterra’s balance sheet.

Regulatory record

• AcreTrader Management, LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser (CRD 309641). We found no disciplinary disclosures in search results; the Form ADV itself was not retrievable (SEC IAPD, 2026).
• AcreTrader Financial, LLC, FINRA CRD 320820, registered as a broker-dealer from February 8, 2023 and withdrew on August 2, 2024 (FINRA BrokerCheck, 2026). BrokerCheck as summarised in search shows no disclosure events. The withdrawal was not announced; a broker-dealer that lasts eighteen months is a business decision, not a sanction, but the “FINRA member” badge on old review pages is stale.
• We found no SEC enforcement action, no FINRA action, no state securities order and no class action against AcreTrader, Inc., AcreTrader Management or AcreTrader Financial (search results, September 2026). That is the absence of a search hit, not a certification.

Lawsuits

None found. We searched for dockets naming the entities and for investor suits over the Australian receiverships and found nothing. Trustpilot reviewers complain that the company has not compensated them; none reports having sued.

Complaint patterns

• Better Business Bureau: AcreTrader, Inc. holds an A+ rating with no customer reviews and no complaint pattern; the profile shows accreditation from March 2019 on one page and “not accredited” on another, so the status is unclear as of September 2026 (BBB, 2026).
• Trustpilot: 3.2 out of 5 on nine reviews as of July 2026 (Trustpilot; count unverified at publication). Nine is not a sample; the content is still informative because the negative reviews are specific: the Australian receiverships and the loss of all principal; a reviewer’s $176,062 across eight farms over five years that returned about 2.8% undiscounted with one total loss; a claim that diligence was “zero” and that the company showed “no remorse”; and an onboarding complaint about a refused bank link (Trustpilot, 2025 to 2026; unverified customer reports). The positive reviews praise communication and transparency.
• Investor blogs and forums: Physician on FIRE, Passive Income MD, Retire Before Dad and WalletHacks have all invested and published multi-year results; their common themes are distributions in the 3% to 5% band, K-1s on time, and frustration with the absence of any secondary market (2022 to 2026). WalletHacks also published the almond-ranch post-mortem.

Red flags, dated

1. The related-party fund, March 2026. Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund LP (Form D, February 19, 2026) buys the same assets the platform sells to you and expects to take at least 50.1% of future listings (Agri Investor, 2026); Proterra owns both. Nothing in the public record says the April 2026 sale of 57 farms went to the fund; nothing says it did not. Until the buyer and the appraisal process are disclosed, treat any affiliate sale as unpriced.
2. The broker-dealer withdrawal, August 2, 2024, one year before the company was sold. Review pages that describe AcreTrader as a FINRA member are wrong as of that date.
3. The team. The founder left with Acres.com. AcreTrader and Acres.com together employed “close to 100” people in January 2025 (Talk Business & Politics, January 13, 2025); after the split, three data vendors put AcreTrader at 17 to 18 employees between February and July 2026 (Tracxn, LeadIQ, Crustdata; vendor counts). A team that size servicing dozens of LLCs, a new fund and a pipeline is a servicing risk.
4. Permanent-crop leverage. The wipe-outs were orchards with debt. The platform still advertises a 6% to 14% permanent-crop band.
5. Unaudited performance claims. “75 realisations, $189M returned” includes return of principal, and no third party has audited the platform-level IRR.
6. Political exposure. JD Vance’s 2022 Senate financial disclosure listed up to $65,000 invested in AcreTrader through Narya Capital, and Civil Eats reported in September 2024 that there was no indication he had divested (Civil Eats, September 18, 2024; Snopes, October 2024). That is not a risk to your money; it is a reason the platform appears in press about farmland financialisation and a reason to expect scrutiny of institutional farmland buying.

This section is two lists, specific about size, horizon and temperament.

AcreTrader suits you if

• You are accredited, you have at least $100,000 of liquid assets outside this investment, and the farm will be under 5% of your net worth, because there is no way out for five to ten years.
• You want a deed-level asset with a cash tenant and no mark-to-market, and an account balance that never moves until the sale does not bother you.
• You are buying unleveraged Midwestern row crop offerings, where every announced exit with a published IRR has come in between 11% and 22% net.
• You will hold in a taxable account (for the depreciation and the capital-gains rate) or a Roth IRA with an unleveraged farm.
• You have a preparer who can handle four to eight K-1s and non-resident state returns without charging you the first year’s rent.

Skip it if

• You may need the money inside seven years for any reason. A private transfer after one year is a theory; nobody has published a completed one.
• You want farmland exposure at $500 or $5,000: the minimum is $10,000 and a sensible position is $25,000 in each of three farms, or $75,000.
• You would be tempted by the higher advertised IRR on a permanent-crop or leveraged offering. That is how principal was lost on this platform.
• You need to 1031 into or out of the position. The units are partnership interests and do not qualify.
• You are uncomfortable owning a minority stake in a retail LLC whose majority co-owner is a fund run by the same manager, until the affiliate rules are disclosed.
• You already own LAND or FPI and think this is the same exposure. It is not: the REITs are priced daily and move with the stock market; AcreTrader’s LLCs are unpriced until sale.

This section puts AcreTrader beside the named competitors and the listed alternative on the same $25,000, as of September 2026.

Fee sources: AcreTrader Reg BI disclosure and FAQ (2026); FarmTogether fund page and AngelInvestorsNetwork (2026); Harvest Returns Fund II page (2026); Farmland LP investors page and White Coat Investor (2026); LAND Q2 2026 release and StockAnalysis (September 2026); FPI Q2 2026 release (July 29, 2026).

Which reader goes where

If you want the cheapest fee and the longest published exit list on a single Midwestern farm, AcreTrader is the pick, and it is not close on fees: Farmland LP’s 2-and-20 and FarmTogether’s performance fee both cost more on a farm that works. If you want a permanent-crop or specialty-ag bet and will pay for an operator’s expertise, Farmland LP’s organic conversion strategy at least aligns the carry with a 6% hurdle, and FarmTogether’s fund gives you a capped redemption window. Harvest Returns is the place for smaller cheques and agricultural credit, with the caveat that a platform whose deals charge investors nothing is paid by the sponsors it lists. If you are not accredited, or you might need the money, LAND and FPI are the only doors, and both are farmland-flavoured equities that move with the stock market. A reader who wants private farmland’s long-run return and cannot lock up capital does not have a product; that is the trade-off the title names.

This section is the real sequence and the six documents to read before you wire.

The steps

1. Create an account at acretrader.com and choose the investing entity (individual, joint, trust, LLC or IRA).
2. Complete accreditation verification: a third-party letter dated within 90 days, or income and asset documents. Rule 506(c) requires this before any sale.
3. Link a bank account for ACH or arrange a wire. One Trustpilot reviewer reported being refused a bank link without explanation after approval; if that happens, call.
4. Browse the live offerings. Each carries a private placement memorandum, an operating agreement, a subscription agreement, the lease summary, the projected cash yield and IRR, and the hold target.
5. Subscribe: choose the number of units, e-sign, and fund within the stated window into the North Capital escrow. Popular farms fill in hours.
6. Wait for the closing notice confirming the LLC took title; the first K-1 arrives the following spring and the first distribution the following December if the rent cycle allows.

Six things to read before wiring money

1. The capital structure section of the PPM. Is there debt on the farm? If so, you are taking price risk on the crop and rate risk on the loan, which is where this platform’s losses were.
2. The lease. Cash rent or crop share? Term? Purchase option and at what price? A tenant option at a fixed price caps your upside; the Northland Organic and Goose Creek sales both happened under one.
3. The fee schedule in the operating agreement, not the website: the formation-cost cap (up to 2.5%), the annual fee and its base, the 5% disposition fee, and any provision for the manager to charge the LLC for services.
4. The affiliate clause. Does the Proterra fund hold a stake in this farm? What must happen before the manager sells to, or buys from, an affiliate: appraisal, member vote, or nothing?
5. The transfer clause. The one-year holding period, the consent requirement and any right of first refusal for the manager.
6. The tax section: which states the LLC files in, whether it makes composite filings, and whether it expects UBTI for IRA holders.

AcreTrader is the best-priced and best-documented way for an accredited American to own a piece of a cash-rented Midwestern farm, and we would not put money into anything else it sells. The fee stack, 0.75% a year with about 2% in and 5% out and no carried interest, is the cheapest in the category, and on the platform’s own targets it costs about 1.9 points a year. The published exits are real, all cash-rented row crop farms sold above target, with five published net IRRs between 11% and 22%, and the platform’s disclosure of them is better than any competitor’s. That earns the rating.

Three things keep it at 3.5 rather than 4. The first is that the same company sold leveraged Australian orchards and a California almond ranch whose investors got nothing, or 43 cents, and the press releases do not mention them. The second is liquidity: seven years without a market, a secondary venue promised for years and never built, and a private-transfer clause nobody has shown working. The third is new since August 2025: Proterra owns the manager of your LLC and a fund that intends to hold 50.1% of the farms listed beside you, and within a month of that fund’s launch 57 platform farms changed hands for more than $135M without a named buyer or a price per acre. The structure is not wrong. It is unpriced.

The rating would rise to 4 if AcreTrader disclosed the buyer, the appraisal process and the per-vintage returns on the April 2026 package, the terms on which the fund and the retail LLCs co-own a farm, and a full exit register covering all 75 realisations, including the receiverships, with the IRR of each. It would fall to 3 if the retail single-farm channel goes a year without new offerings while the fund raises, if a further affiliate sale closes without an independent appraisal, or if the Proterra fund gates redemptions inside its first three years.

What to watch, with dates: the Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund’s first Form D amendment, which will show capital raised and investor count; any statement of who bought the 57 farms; the count of new single-farm offerings between September 2026 and March 2027 (fewer than a dozen would say the channel is winding down); the NCREIF Farmland Property Index for 2026, published in early 2027, and whether permanent cropland recovers from its −10.2% year; the USDA Land Values 2026 Summary, released in August 2026 and not retrieved for this review, against the $5,830 an acre of August 2025; and the first announced exit from a 2023 or 2024 vintage, the first test of the platform’s underwriting at the top of the land cycle.