about > leadership
GOOD PEOPLE.
GREAT EXPERIENCE.
At Scythe & Spade, we've attracted a unique team of leaders with unmatched real-world experience in a wide range of ag-related disciplines. We're able to provide our clients with both strategic, long-term focus and hands-on, day-to-day execution.
Helene Cser
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Helene Cser comes to Scythe & Spade with an unusual combination of skills and experience, including GIS for data collection and analysis, precision agriculture database development and analytics, and knowledge of farm management practices. Most recently Helene was a founding team member of Growers, a startup agricultural technology firm which built a platform that enabled farmers to capture granular crop production input data, manage crop plans, and use data from their operations to create cost saving variable rate planting and fertility prescriptions. As the Data Operations Manager she was accountable for the data integrity for over 130,000 acres with accounts in 27 states and aided with the development of proprietary algorithms. She then took her knowledge of precision agriculture data and managed direct to farmer and partner accounts as a Customer Success Manager covering the Dakotas and the Mississippi Delta region.
Helene has a master’s degree in Natural Resource Management and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from North Carolina State University (NCSU). As an undergraduate she spent the summers leading a scouting team for an agronomic consultant which specialized in production crops, such as cotton, tobacco and peanuts, for insect and weed pressure where she learned the fundamentals of real-world production agriculture.
Helene will be based in Raleigh North Carolina where she will support the company in the continued expansion of their proprietary FarmBase© software as well as lead the eastern U.S. client property acquisition, evaluation and management efforts.
Matt Harrod
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Matt Harrod is an agricultural economics and supply chain professional with over 20 years’ experience in specialty crop production, facility management, contract development and execution, supply risk management and hedging, as well as agricultural policy and investment analysis.
Over the last ten years he has served as a Deputy Agricultural Secretary in Indiana, Agricultural Economics and Strategy Manager for BP’s North American Biofuels group, and most recently Director of U.S. Supply Chain Development for Chemtex International’s cellulosic ethanol projects. Matt has designed and contracted multi-feedstock biomass supply chains totaling over 5 million tons and $246 million across multiple U.S. states.
He has extensively traveled professionally on four continents and has both a degree in agricultural economics and an MBA from Purdue University.
Mari Isaac
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Mari brings over twenty years of experience from the corporate world of the Bay Area of California, with high-level managerial roles in Commercial Real Estate, Finance, and Law. Her experience includes developing and executing numerous commercial real estate marketing plans and overseeing a staff of twenty paralegals and legal secretaries. These real-world high-level experiences have honed her diversified skills in driving day-to-day operations and implementing successful strategic business practices.
Mari Isaac’s role as Executive Assistant Manager is to support all aspects of Scythe and Spade’s vision and strategy, including marketing and presentation materials development, social media outreach, as well as client and prospective client communications.
Mari is based in Boise, Idaho where she will also be responsible for managing priorities for the team, and to continuously develop and oversee strategies and systems for operational efficiency. Mari has a passion for urban sustainable farming, which is influenced by her work and travels around the world.
Brett MacNeil
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An agribusiness consultant for more than 25 years, Brett MacNeil has a long history of helping his clients successfully profit from the unprecedented transformations in agribusiness.
Brett has a first-hand appreciation for the day-to-day challenges farmers and ranchers face, along with a passion for helping them preserve their way of life.
After putting himself through the University of Arizona (B.S. Agriculture with an emphasis in Animal Sciences), Brett quickly rose to Vice President and Designated Broker for a major agribusiness management company in Phoenix. In this position, he was deeply involved in nearly every aspect of the operation: farm management, finance, marketing, sales, acquisition analysis, contracting and negotiation, as well as government program management and compliance.
During graduate school in the 1990’s, Brett was one of the first to recognize how advances in information technology and finance could be harnessed to benefit producers and institutional farmland investors alike. Inspired by these insights, he launched Scythe & Spade in 1998.
In 2014, after selling portions of the business to key employees, Brett was recruited as Vice President and Director of Acquisitions and Dispositions for Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), one of America’s largest and oldest institutional investors in farmland with a $3.0 billion portfolio of more than 300,000 acres under management. There he was responsible for leading HAIG’s farmland acquisition and disposition program, including sourcing, underwriting, due diligence and strategic alliances, giving him valuable experience from the perspective of an institutional investor.
An entrepreneur at heart, Brett returned to Scythe & Spade in 2017 armed with a renewed energy and a wealth of new insights to help his clients prosper in an ever-changing landscape.
Brett is a graduate of the Keller School of Management (MBA), a licensed real estate broker (Idaho, Oregon and Arizona), and an instrument-rated, private pilot. He is a board member of the Farm Financial Standards Council, as well as the Northwest Agribusiness Executive Seminar.
Brent Reed
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Brent has 30 years of experience working in agribusiness capital markets and the farmland asset class.
His first 19 years were devoted to the debt side of the capital markets through institutional financing of large agricultural farming and dairy operations in Central California. In his roles as a lender and manager of acquisitions, Brent underwrote and appraised thousands of acres throughout Arizona and California. He has a great understanding of how water, micro-climates, soils and macro/ micro agricultural economic factors impact income streams and farm asset values.
Over the last decade Brent devoted his time to the equity side of capital markets through institutional acquisitions of large farmland holdings in California and the Pacific Northwest. In his role as an Associate Director/Senior Acquisitions Manager at Manulife Investment Management Company (formally Hancock Natural Resource Group), Brent managed acquisition activities primarily in the West and Pacific Northwest where he acquired and directly developed diversified agricultural portfolios of tree nuts, wine grapes, citrus and irrigated row crops totaling over 25,000 acres at a value of $500 million dollars. Under Brent’s leadership at Hancock, the portfolio grew to four billion dollars across the United States. Brent has experience in all the major ag regions of the US, both acquiring and divesting assets.
Brent developed an interest in agriculture at an early age, growing up on his family’s farm near Porterville, California in Tulare County. Brent is a third-generation farmer in California and began his career just as the industry was coming out of the farm crisis in the early 1990’s. With direct experience in production agriculture, he understands the complicated cycles of the industry and is extremely knowledgeable about California’s water resources and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
Brent earned a BS in Agricultural Business from California State University of Fresno, is a licensed California Real Estate salesperson (DRE#01751246) and holds an Accredited Agricultural Consultant designation from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraiser. He also served as a board member/treasurer for the Ag Lenders Society of California.
Addison Taylor
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Agriculture has always been part of Addison’s daily life, having grown up on his family’s farming operation in Arkansas and developed an outstanding career in farmland real estate investing throughout the United States.
Addison has extensive experience sourcing and acquiring Investment Grade Farmland in all major production regions of the U.S., most recently with Manulife Investment Management Company (formally Hancock Natural Resource Group). He has sourced, managed due diligence and closed opportunities in irrigated row crops, vegetables and permanent crops and has closed deals totaling over 80,000 acres over a period of eight years in seven states with a book value of over $300 million dollars. During this time, he learned the ins and outs of institutional farmland acquisitions and sales in multiple regions, with highly variable risk and return tradeoffs in both row crops and highly complicated permanent crop systems. This understanding and experience gained in different regional nuances of farming, local markets, water situations as well as relationships with key landowners, investors, and influencers separate his experience from most in this field.
Addison earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Arkansas in Agriculture Business (B.S.A.). It was while attending the University of Arkansas that Addison enlisted in the Arkansas Army National Guard and later earned a commission as a Second Lieutenant after graduating. He served over twelve years in the Arkansas National Guard, deploying to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, achieving the rank of Major and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service, the Meritorious Service Medal, the US Army Combat Action Badge and multiple other awards while deployed to Afghanistan and throughout a 12-year career with the National Guard.
He later earned his Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) through the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Addison holds an Accredited Farm Manager designation from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, in addition to an Arkansas Real Estate salesperson license.
Addison devotes his personal time to his family and can often be found either at his children’s sporting events, spending time in a duck blind, or volunteering in the special need’s ministry at his local church.