Covid-19’s Military Industrial Complex II
July 1, 2021
Oligarch Food
July 31, 2021The Rush for Farmland
Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio Show #1282
This Poll is closed!!
Listen Now…
GUEST: Holly Rippon-Butler Land Campaign Director National Young Farmers Coalition
This from Pearl Buck in The Good Earth: “It is the end of a family when they begin to sell their land. Out of the land we came and into it we must go. And if you hold your land you can live.”
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – The Rush for Farmland
Perhaps those rushing to buy up the world’s farmland are doing so because they read The Good Earth. But one suspects not! The more likely reason they are rushing to buy up farmland is that they were listening to a clever financial advisor.
“Look,” the financial advisor would say, “There is no better place to put your money than good farmland. Unlike money that melts away like snow in Spring, farmland is a tangible asset that holds its value. And unlike other tangible assets, like gold, farmland pays dividends in the form of rents and crops.
Those who have a lot of cash to invest listened and heard. Today, a small group of non-farming landlords control and rent out approximately 30% of all U.S. farmland. One of them, Bill Gates, owns 270,000 acres across 18 states. And as today’s active farmers retire out over the next decade or so, 400 million more acres of farmland will go to those with pockets filled with cash.
Let us, for a moment, take an imaginary walk down Any Street in Any Town, USA. Give a quick look at each home we walk by. Is the home occupied by its owner or its renter? It’s easy to see, because owners can’t afford not to keep up their property; while renters can’t afford to keep up the property of others.
The fact that so much farmland is being taken up by those who do not farm leads us to ask:
Leave Comment Below: Who will be left to tend the land?
Take the 2X2 Pledge
“Together, we can eat our way to economic security and personal freedom, and it won’t cost a dime and it will be so easy it will make you blush!”
Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain
#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.
#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.
#3 Cheap food isn’t! READ MORE
1 Comment
Michael,
Your program about the rush for farm land is to the point. The problem is that so few young people want to go into farming and most of them have a non farming background. In our county in Virginia (Fauquier County) close to Washington DC, most of the farm land is owned by non farmers. These owners rent to a few large farmers so that they can get the county’s generous land use tax which was intended to help legacy family farms from being forced to sell because of property taxes. We are one of the few legacy farms (Hollinfarms.com) and to survive we have moved to Ag tourism with a pick you own farm.
Your guest couldn’t reply in an adequate way to your questions about ownership and renting or leasing. What we are seeing now is something that already happened in New England. The land is reverting to forest.