Lending against farmland at 55 percent LTV versus buying a fractional position outright, trying to figure out which one actually fits what I'm building

I keep coming back to this. My lawyer and I are putting together a small lending fund, first deal probably somewhere between $300k and $500k, and the collateral we're looking at is a 200-acre corn and soybean operation in central Illinois that last appraised at $9,200 an acre, so call it $1.84 million. At 55 percent LTV we'd be in at roughly $1 million, rate we're pricing is around 8.5 percent, first lien, two-year term with an extension option. That pencils to about $85,000 a year in interest income before servicing costs and legal. The floor is what draws me, not the upside, because I don't get the upside. If the borrower walks I'm foreclosing on grade A dirt at a basis that's well below current market. That's the whole thesis.

The competing option I keep looking at is a co-ownership structure on a similar-quality parcel in the same region, maybe 15 to 20 percent of a 480-acre tract, so a $250k to $300k check, cash rent around $280 an acre, which at my slice works out to something like $13,000 to $16,000 a year. Lower yield, but I own the ground and I participate if that $9,200 an acre becomes $10,500 in six years.

The yield gap is real. Lending wins on income. Ownership wins if land keeps moving. What I can't model cleanly is how the legal complexity and time cost of the lending structure compares to the simplicity of just owning a piece of dirt with a competent operator already on it. Anyone done both and formed an actual opinion on which is harder to run?