'American Soil' Is Increasingly Foreign Owned
npr.org
npr.org
Also... the U.S. already can direct people not to farm and I'm 100% confident in emergencies or if it feels threatened it can take the foreign owned farmland back. I'm not super concerned about this one.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
I've wondered about this for a while. On one hand, owning investments on foreign soil seems super risky when shit hits the fan, because you depend upon friendly relations with the legal system of the foreign country to enforce your property rights. If it really comes down to "Americans are going hungry and homeless because Chinese are speculating on real estate", don't you think they're going to kick the Chinese out regardless of what the deed says?
OTOH, the scale of interconnectedness across the globe seems to create a very large market for private non-national security companies. It's not just Chinese in America - as the article noted, it's Americans in a wide variety of other countries, as well as corporations owning factories and having whole supply chains across the globe. If shit hits the fan there will be a lot of money seeking mercenaries, private armies, and independent defense contractors to enforce their property rights globally.
If the nation is run by its people then what you describe would indeed happen. If it is run by a small cadre of wealthy then they would invite investment world wide to maximally drive up land values regardless of homeless numbers. Indeed there would be extreme reluctance as any seizure or even hint of it would permanently reduce land values.
Perhaps we'll see which is the case.
It's also a marker for said peace. If there's a lot of trade already, many others will feel comfortable participating because the market has indicated that investing in the relationship is not terribly risky.
Plus it’s not the same as what China is doing in east Africa as it pertains farmland since some of that is tied into deals more or less obligating the countries to comply.
The high agricultural water consumption is basically consumers saying "I value my beef more than my lawn", which is pretty accurate. We hear about residential water conservation (which, as you mention, is a literal drop in the bucket) because nobody's seriously suggesting banning meat, but given the choice between water shortages (as long as it doesn't get to the point where drinking water is endangered) or going without favorite foods, most people would take the water shortages. Chances are, even a significant portion of vegans would rather go with the water shortage if everyone was a vegan and it was no longer an effective way to signal cultural values.
American interests aren't created by individual preferences, but advertising from entrenched corporations that shift real interests, like having food, into more profitable interests, like buying almonds.
"Americans have special rights in America, but your country has to grant Americans a fair playing field versus your own citizens" is colonialism, and one step down from banana republics (where Americans had superior property rights to non-Americans in Honduras)
I thought the great achievement of globalization was furthering Raegan's/Thacher's neoliberal agenda, turning industrial jobs into a race for the bottom where the global lowest wage bidder wins, and undoing a century of labor protections and working/middle class safety nets -- all the while destroying the planet with increased BS trade.
>"Americans have special rights in America, but your country has to grant Americans a fair playing field versus your own citizens"
Who said other countries have to do that? Other countries should prioritize their own citizen's well being too.
Who will trust US government then? Who will use US dollar and invest in US treasury bill and securities?
That is conjecture. Land grabs happen all over the world in a varied number of scenarios without destabilizing economies. Securities each have their own markets, but let's focus on the mortgage bonds.
How the US govt deals with the owenership of real estate is not directly tied to mortgage bonds on those properties, as long as the interest continues to be paid out or off. Eminent domain is a power and I'm not sure how it's use affects these bonds directly without provisions about dissolving them. In such a bold move, it's presumptuous to assume the federal govt wouldn't know the consequences beforehand (eg bank bailouts).
US is different, here private property rights are part of the constitution and can't be taken away for social good like in some European countries.
Constitution is like a set of beliefs, if beliefs are changed, suddenly country loses its identity as beliefs are inherent part of it and then people will have hard time trusting new country.
That's... not at all true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_S...
Hell, it doesn't even need to be for social good.
At the end of the day the US dollar's strength is tied to the us political and military and economic power, not their trust worthiness.
I trust that the us will us it's army to ensure the value of the dollar stays strong globally.
As the article points out, farmers are retiring and their families don't want to run the farms anymore, so someone needs to buy it. Your choices are generally going to be either a mega farming corp or investors.
I've read a couple articles on wind/solar use of farm land where the farmers' quotes reveals their true interests and concerns. At first they may complain about "change" or views, but their view, but economic expansions comes out as the far more likely culprit. Farmers are far far more politically sophisticated than the crazy billboards on I-5 would have a person believe.
Wind also has almost negligible impact inland use, and even if the land is foreign owned it will likely be rented out to be farmed. Farmland that is leased for solar use is almost always the marginal parts of the land that don't produce much anyway.
And some German experiments are combing solar with crops in a way that produces overall economic wins. Many farmers will adapt quickly to new tech, and those that don't will go bankrupt quickly.
They are mostly economically more invested and interested than average Joe from the street...
>Scratch the surface of the farmer complaints, and they're probably just upset that they can't gobble up their neighbors' acreage as smaller farms fail.
Interesting you should mention that. Considering that the current regulatory, support, and incentive sructure around agriculture (in the U.S.) is notably skewed in favor of "Big Ag", it's not necessarily as straightforward as you imply to assign banal greed as the primary motivation of Farmers.
You don't farm to make millions. The returns are terrible, with generally hard legal ceilings on many items. You're fighting a constant battle against the elements, your input sources (fiscal and material), and your own equipment and infrastructure to build up enough of a buffer to absorb down the road risks.
Wanting to upsize in the current framework means availing yourself greater security through more of a risk buffer. This grants the farmer more peace of mind in the face of a rather dynamic trade landscape, and an uncertain future given the changing climate.
Farmers are not stupid people. You don't run a sustainable farming op without coming to terms with the physical reality of the world; which includes a realistic view in terms of risk mitigation through political activism, and optimizing for getting the most out of the ambient environment. Farmers quickly come to terms with the difficulty and impracticality of maintaining the "hot house" flower, or unproductive livestock. A cold, inescapable sense of pragmatism develops from working closely with, and observing the machinery of the natural world at work.
Not all may evenly consciously realize they are doing it. The longer you do it, the more you forget about the "why's" and "what you get's" as the practice of farming gets so ingrained it stops being a matter of what you want/chose to do, and just kind of becomes what you are. It's often a conducive to a more solitary, or fairly tight knit community; and communication tends to be secondary to execution. So it shouldn't come as a surprise when individually interviewing a farmer tends to generate some scandalous "gems" in common media. Cattle and crops don't care much for the artfully crafted word; and if farmers as a collective are actually pushed into a situation where time is better spent in a meeting as opposed to getting actual work done, it tends to be a signal that there is something fairly serious going on.
Long story short, the point I'm meandering to is this:
Don't write off any farmer, large or small, as being a callous, heartless, inflexible, unintelligent, greedy, unsociable human being. They're dealing with an environment as unforgiving as it is demanding. Then throwing economics on top of it. This means that of all people to keep an eye on as a barometer for change, the farmer is one he'll of a good signal to pay attention to. If a change impacts the fundamental process of farming; it has consequences likely everywhere else.
Food for thought.
This is something to worry about as our economic policy is finishing off whatever is left of the small farmer.
Concentration of food production resources is an obviously bad thing that will be harmful to the country in the future. Particularly obvious which vegetables and berries, where a few dozen entities in 2-3 California counties essentially make the market.
In the meantime, the former seasonal prime growing areas in places like New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for these crops are now subdivisions. So when climate change makes irrigating the Imperial Valley less fruitful, we’ll have permanently lost that capacity.
This strikes me as the ideal state of affairs, if we don't overproduce food a below average crop would mean people starving.
Although I do see major problems with how our subsidies are currently applied, the idea that we should just completely eliminate subsidies is a one way track to famine.
No doubt America has a lot of land to spare, and it's probably not a problem.
But on some scale, particularly for high-value residential areas, it can definitely be a problem.
Vancouver is really a case for that. At least on London/NYC there's a lot local people (ie Londoners) who can pay 'global rates' for homes, banking is big there. In Van, the locals cannot afford anything unless the bought a long time ago.
It was well within the scope for my (Canadian) parents to retire in North Van 25 years ago, I remember them talking about it as we were skiing near there as a kid. There's zero chance now and it's not because 'the local economy is booming'.
But there are probably some material 'good things' about foreign ownership of some farmland as well.
Didn't work out for them...
The land in and of itself isn't worth much more than its lot value, and the Canadians, Chinese and Germans aren't exactly buying all those acres to turn them into parking lots and strip malls.
That's very surprising for a nation that bars foreign-flagged ships from moving cargo between American ports.
This is generally how land values work...
Looks like[0] the real value of your average acre of US farmland is about 3x what it was fifty years ago. There's more data available if you want to drill down into cropland vs pastureland, and specific regions (e.g., Corn Belt vs the Southeast).
[0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v...
Ultimately the farm was too small to be super profitable at about 600 acres (640 in a square mile). It was corn and soybeans, primarily to feed the cattle and hogs. They really couldn't make the economics of splitting between the co-owners, so one bought the other out.
The other operations in the area are 1000+ acres, many 2-3000.