Our Story

Welcome! Thank you for visiting Farm Raised Capital where our vision is to truly make this a community where like-minded individuals can learn, grow, and help one another achieve their personal goals. Please allow us to share our story:
We have deep agricultural roots stemming from both sides of our families.

Like many, Mike was farm raised but his family farm was not large enough to support him joining it full time. He has a passion for farms and farmland, and has spent the last 20 plus years working in the agricultural industry consulting with farmers and landowners. In 2018, he left a successful career in the farm management & real estate field to join Next Gen Ag Advocates as one of the founding owners.

At Next Gen, Mike specializes in helping family farms with their family farm transitions, estate and legacy planning, and they oversee a matching and mentoring program to connect young and aspiring farmers to retiring farmers without a successor.

Every family farm Mike works with has a concern over having enough cash and cash flow to support bringing in the next generation or expanding the farm operation to remain viable. This is why we put the Farm Raised platform together, to help others in the agricultural community create off-farm income, tax benefits, and build equity through investing together passively in proven, recession proof commercial real estate properties.

Longer term, we plan to leverage the equity from commercial real estate to support our goal in buying farmland – a legacy we wish to leave for our children.

Our Mission

To help like-minded individuals in the agricultural community create passive income and wealth in a tax-advantaged way, while having a proactive plan in place for preserving the legacy you wish to leave behind. Most importantly, to help you create the freedom of time to so you can spend more time with the people you love and for the things you enjoy doing.

Our Core Values

It’s one thing to invest our personal funds, but yet another to create a platform so others can invest alongside us. You can be rest assured the opportunities we present this community are well vetted, and we spend a lot of time interviewing and partnering with top real estate operators with a proven track record, experience, access to deal flow, conservative underwriting assumptions, and boots on the ground.

Our goal is for this to be a user-friendly, hassle-free platform which includes strong communication to our investors as well as within the community.

Impact Investing

In addition to our core values, we are intentional in investing to make an impact. Not only to help guide others in taking advantage of the benefits of investing in real estate, but also to improve the quality of life for those individuals occupying the properties we invest in. This may include improving class B or C properties to class A- or B+ with every amenities many of us take advantage.

At Farm Raised, we are committed to the future of Agriculture and donate a portion of our profits to benefit young and aspiring farmers looking for opportunities to get into production agriculture. This is one of the missions of Mike’s consulting company, Next Gen Ag Advocates, which administers a matching and mentoring program with this very purpose.

Learn more about Next Gen Ag Advocates, Click Here

Meet Our Team


John Letters

Investment Partner


Tyson Cobb

Investment Partner


Hemant Pawar

Investment Partner


Derek Peterson

Investment Partner


Bala Krishnan

Investment Partner

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Mike Downey

CEO – Founder

Mike has deep agricultural roots, and like many others, grew up on a family farm but the farm wouldn’t support him joining full time. Dirt “runs through his veins” and he has a passion for family farms and farmland. Truth be told, he and his wife Megan began investing in commercial real estate back in the late 2000’s, due to its easier barrier of entry and positive cash flow. This passive income has afforded them several opportunities:

It gave Mike the courage to leave a successful career in Ag to be co-owner of Next Gen Ag, which helps family farms with their estate and legacy planning – a passion of Mike’s. Mike and his wife Megan are also the founders of Farm Raised Capital, a platform for the Ag community to invest together in commercial properties previously only available to high-net-worth individuals. They also self-direct their IRA’s into real estate, and recently reached a goal in purchasing their first farm.

At Farm Raised, Mike uses his background in business and finance, asset management, and communicating with land investors to be the conduit between the Farm Raised community and the real estate operators we invest with

Megan Downey

Co – Founder

Megan also has farming roots from both sides of her family, and worked in a strong agricultural focused community bank for many years before joining Mike to help with his consulting business, and now Farm Raised Capital. Megan uses here background in the financial industry to underwrite new deals and manage the lending, legal, and administrative aspects of the business. She also enjoys the thrill of finding new deals and communicating with real estate brokers who specialize in commercial real estate.

John Letters

Investment Partner

John Letters is the Managing Member of Giant Stride Equity a Real Estate investment company he founded to invest in multifamily assets. He recently joined Rod Khleif and his team at CREE Capital as their Regional acquisitions manager. Rod is a well-known syndicator and has access to some of the top deals within the real estate industry.

John studied Economics and Finance at California Polytechnic university of San Luis Obispo. John has owned and operated Car care facilities under Letters incorporated for the past twenty years which included car washes, retail fuel sales as well as vehicle maintenance centers. John has designed, financed, constructed, and managed six centers and managed over 135 employees. He has been in the real estate business for over six years and currently owns commercial office, single family residential, as well as his 440+ units of commercial multifamily.

He is leveraging his experience in Real Estate, Finance and construction to assist investors in achieving incredible returns with a truly passive investment.

Tyson Cobb

Investment Partner

Tyson Cobb is an orthopedic surgeon by trade, but also a professional real estate investor with over 20 years’ experience investing in real estate. He not only takes advantage of the tax benefits of investing in commercial real estate, but also shares a passion similar to those in the Farm Raised Community for leveraging the benefits of commercial real estate to purchase farmland and recreational land. Tyson owns over $18 million in NNN properties, 2,000+ multifamily units, and 1,500+ self-storage units.

Hemant Pawar

Investment Partner

Hemant Pawar is the Principal of Zen Abode Capital Group and lives in the Bay Area of California. He invests in multifamily real estate and is the owner and operator of apartments in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas and New Mexico. He is a General Partner on 800+ apartments and has $55M+ worth of assets under management. He also works full-time as IT Program Director with the largest integrated healthcare organization in the US.

Derek Peterson

Investment Partner

Derek and Derek’s firm – Adapt Media Agency are the pre-eminent marketing and branding forces in the Real Estate Syndication Industry. He has built brands, branding and marketing systems for over 800+ companies. These systems have since powered over $35 Billion in Assets Under Management and over 225,000 multi-family apartment units.

From 2012-2017 Derek founded and ran three highly successful organizations in the medical field. Over the years, his companies have scaled national sales teams to exceed 2500+, developed cutting-edge software, and disrupted industries.

After graduating with a degree in Marketing, Derek headed into “big corporate” and moved up the ranks with companies such as ADP, Covidien, and Allergan. Soon after, he made a career and life-altering decision to go out on his own and start his own enterprises. His extensive experience in marketing real estate and its various aspects has led him to speak on many stages, host several podcasts, and paved the way for him to enjoy the many benefits of real estate investing personally.

Bala Krishnan

Investment Partner

Bala Krishnan is the owner of 10Y. When Bala set foot in the world of real estate, he didn’t merely see buildings; he saw boundless opportunities. It began with a modest 12-unit apartment in Dallas, TX that swiftly doubled in value in only 22 months. It was this remarkable realization after selling the Dallas property- the potential for exponential growth- that truly shaped 10Y’s destiny. Bala, with his wife Sri, conceptualized a model of investment that wasn’t just about quick wins but about crafting a legacy.