Our Story
The Land Group
“We have built a company with vision, intention & mission. This is our story; it begins with the land.”
– Ben Alder, Founder of The Land Group
The Land Group
The Land Group
“We have built a company with vision, intention & mission. This is our story; it begins with the land.”
– Ben Alder, Founder of The Land Group
By Ben Alder (founder of TLG)
The Land Group story begins with my story—while standing on a concrete block in a mill pond my grandfather owned. To this day, I recall wanting to know what “everything is” and what makes everything “work”, at 10 years old. I wanted to understand natural systems, and I was especially drawn to wetlands where ducks and fish constantly eluded me. It would be years before I learned about hydrology, energetics, wildlife habitats, and what ecology even meant.
As a college student, I learned that everything occurring on the land is ultimately connected to my grandfather’s flooded timber through watershed dynamics and the transference of nutrients and sediment throughout the watershed. By itself, this information pointed to the “right” way to manage land and resources. It seemed easy to decide that one must do “what is right ecologically”. Fortunately, I quickly learned that our way of life on the Chesapeake as a farmer, waterman, forest manager, and even a homeowner with a small lawn, is tied to the land through a complex nexus of land uses for their life & livelihood.
My interest in land use, land management, and conservation were created out of these early lessons. Over the many years since standing on that concrete block, I have come to understand that conservation of our natural resources is simply good business. It is a conservative mindset that chooses not to “catch the last fish or deplete the land of its fertility”. This has been consistently demonstrated to me by many individuals who work or own the land. Land use and natural resource management is a practice of balance.
The complexity of understanding land use and land value is woven into the fabric of The Land Group. In 2012, the building blocks of TLG were forged when Nick Campanaro joined me in developing the systems and fundamentals of what our company is today.
Together, we have internalized this nexus of land use and land value in building TLG. We are unique and unlike most real estate companies working today. The Land Group has a mission to serve landowners with purpose in managing their land as an asset financially, as well as the long-term stewardship of the natural assets on their land.
The architecture of The Land Group built on the foundation Nick and I created with like-minded individuals, each with their own story and connection to the land. It began with a vision. It began with the land.
To define a mission for any organization, intention is paramount. Our intent is not simply to “sell dirt”. While this provides a perfect elevator story, the days of being a Fuller Brush salesman don’t resonate as they once did, and this effort has required greater intention. Through my first ten years in the real estate industry, while also building a natural resource company based in conservation services to landowners, I learned land use and the economic forces of the Chesapeake region. While the Chesapeake is saturated in natural beauty, culture, history, and the amazing place it is to live and work, the Chesapeake region, its land and waters, provide a significant economic machine.
As the largest land use in the Chesapeake and the largest Industry across the region, collectively, Agriculture in the Bay economy is worth over $20.7 Billion Annually.
The facts are that every Bay state is founded on an agricultural economy, and even today, in 2025, this remains true. Today, agriculture in the Chesapeake region underwrites the Bay economy as the largest industry and largest land use across the landscape.
Our commitment to data in the land industry of Chesapeake is perhaps our greatest value as a company. It is with this confidence and knowledge that we can serve the highest-level corporate agribusiness in the region and assist a poultry farm buyer in achieving successful underwriting of their first poultry farm purchase. Our knowledge and documentation of land sales and approach to evaluating values provide a framework for our clients to build, expand, and manage their businesses on.
Through this process and along the way, to put it simply, “We Sell Dirt.”
Through our vision and intention, we have identified a common thread and relationship between land management and agribusiness in the Chesapeake region.
It’s simple. A business must work to sustain its natural capital critical to its existence. While economic theory of the “commons” suggests the waterman might catch the last crab and the farmer may plant the last sustainable crop in the old back field—This tragedy does not play out in black & white, because farmers, watermen, foresters, and land managers each see the impact of their choices on the land. They internalize sustainability and work to find a conservative balance.
The Land Group works with our clients to weave this” common thread” of balance and a conservative use of land into solutions for clients to buy, sell, restore, protect, and manage their land and natural assets.
It began with vision, and it began with the land; it is through this common thread relationship of economics and land use, “We Sell Dirt”.
