In a white paper co-authored by HighQuest Partners and Julie Koeninger (2017), the authors summarize in their opening sentence, “Over the past three decades, farmland investing has grown exponentially from a ‘niche’ investment dominated by a few large pension plans and insurance companies to a mainstream institutional real asset class that increasingly can be accessed by retail-oriented investors.”

Imagine a contest at a local livestock show where attendees are asked to guess the weight of the prize-winning animal. Nearly everyone will fail to get it precisely right. But what if you averaged everyone’s answers?