Ara Partners has acquired a majority interest in Pacific Ag through its infrastructure strategy, the firm announced. Pacific Ag, founded in 1998 in the Columbia River Basin and now operating across more than 30 states, is North America’s largest crop residue supply and logistics company.
The business model is waste to value at field scale. US farms generate hundreds of millions of tons of corn stover, wheat straw and other residue each year, which growers otherwise pay to manage through tilling, removal or nutrient work. Pacific Ag harvests and collects the material with its own fleet and logistics network, stores it, and sells it on as feedstock to dairies, animal protein producers and mushroom growers, with decarbonisation applications a growing outlet. It operates alongside affiliate Reinert Hay Company.
Terms were not disclosed. For Ara, which invests in the energy and industrial transition, Pacific Ag extends a waste-to-value strategy into agriculture: the asset is not the residue, which is abundant, but the harvesting fleet, storage and decades-old grower and customer relationships that make collecting it economic.