10 ms·

Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

211 points by NaOH 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
edwardbernays 1y ago
Forget China. The greatest threat to American freedom and global power is robber baron billionaires. We live in a full-on kleptocracy. It's about time we add some new amendments to the constitution to relevel the balance of powers.
- cozzyd 1y ago
  Fortunately the Illinois governor can be counted on to take a stand against billionaires.
  - edwardbernays 1y ago
    true, we wish this brave and powerful man the best of luck as he takes on his matched opponents: the people in his socioeconomic bracket. amen.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      You jest, but the harsh truth is that almost no change in society is possible unless at least some of the societal elites are on the bandwagon.
      - keybored 1y ago
        ... or that's what they want you to believe
      - edwardbernays 1y ago
        It's both sardonic and genuine. If he's genuine, then I genuinely wish him the best luck. However, it is very hard for me to believe that any billionaire would ever do something generally disfavorable to the current billionaire class. It's even harder for me to believe that, if one of them was to do so, that it would not be for their own further gain, just to the detriment of their peer cohort. I'm a bit jaded from having been lied to too many times. Again, however, if he is genuine: I genuinely wish him the best luck taking on his matched opponents.
        actionfromafar 1y ago
        Agreed.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    I have to admit that for as corrupt as Illinois is, Pritzker has managed to support a few things which his billionaire buddies weren't too fond of. It's not all good, but it's better than I expected. He's called for higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor protections, higher minimum wages and better support for the poors.
    - cozzyd 1y ago
      Yeah I actually like JB, even though I'm somewhat uncomfortable with him being a billionaire.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Alive-in-2025 1y ago
    We have a lot of problems in the US but electing our own shyster based on lies to get a democratic president isn't going to fix the problem. We'll need a truth and reconciliation group after or if Trump gets out of power. We need significant reforms, like getting rid of the electoral college and making supreme court justices have term limits but also not be able to take bribes. Also the president should not have immunity - the unitary executive theory is incredibly dangerous and destructive.
- snarf21 1y ago
  The problem is that they have bought all three systems of government so they can do whatever they want. They own all the media as well. Even something like PBS that is supposed to be more independent is highly dependent on "philanthropy" from these same billionaires and they've fallen victim to what I'm going to moniker as Sinclair's Law ("It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends upon not understanding it" -Upton Sinclair)
- keybored 1y ago
  America just lives under capitalism.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    There are plenty of countries that don't like capitalism. If you don't like it you can move to one of those. You can even go somewhere like the UK if you don't want to give up the US's anglo/protestant culture.
    - keybored 1y ago
      Tell my mother and friends (hypothetical) that. Where do you get off, honestly? You also changed the subject. I also don't live in the US.
thrance 1y ago
[flagged]
sophacles 1y ago
Right. Most of it is owned by the llc the farmer set up for thier land, and/or the family trust set up to prevent the land from being split into ever smaller parcels by inheritance.
- perardi 1y ago
  Yeah, that’s how my farm land is set up. I inherited farm land from my grandfather. I am very much not a farmer, I do not want to live in Southern Illinois, but I don’t want to give up the land, so I rent the land to a farmer with adjacent property. I realize that’s not really the point of this article—this is more about huge firms buying up non-trivial amounts of land.
exaldb 1y ago
https://archive.is/RgcAO https://archive.is/RgcAO
- create-username 1y ago
  Thanks. Got a plain made: “The content is not available in your region”. I’m actually happy the website content is a simple html document instead of JavaScript bloated with capitalism surveillance trackers
bell-cot 1y ago
If you look at history, this is an ancient pattern. In Judaeo-Christian scriptures, the prohibitions against anyone acquiring ownership of land go all the way back to the Torah. Though like pretty much every religious prohibition on behaviors which the well-to-do want to do - those commandments fall under the "we never talk about that part" rule. EDIT: - Please note my "against anyone ACQUIRING ownership of" phrasing, above. - Details are in Leviticus, Chapter 25
- WillPostForFood 1y ago
  There is no biblical prohibition against owning land, but there is plenty of debate, discussion and grappling with the problems of ownership and accumulation. It shows it always an issue, and rules and laws and social norms always need to be debated and changed.
  - legitster 1y ago
    In the Levitical law, there was specifically a concept that all of the land in Israel be split up equally among families. And that ownership of the land reverts every 49 years. So "buying" land was tantamount to a lease. There is actually some interesting scholarly work that shows such a system would work perfectly fine within a modern capitalist system - it would reduce inequality and neatly lines up with natural debt cycles.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  owning land? no, holding debt for longer than 7 years very much so. but you know, that interferes with commerce too much. (also part of the reason for huge amounts of anti-Semitism from about 1100-now )
dlcarrier 1y ago
Most farms are not owned by farmers, most housing is not owned by tenants, most airplanes are not owned by airlines, etc., etc.. Vertical integration can have benefits, but it isn't necessary and has drawbacks. Even when vertically integrated, regulations are often written under the assumption that everything is leased, not owned, so compliance is easier if you own a company that owns an asset, instead of owning that asset directly. For example, if two people carpool in a car that one of them owns, instead of hiring a taxi, they'll usually split the costs of the fuel and the wear on the car. On the other hand, if they were flying in a small airplane owned by one of them, it's illegal to split the costs of wear on the airplane, unless its a rental or air taxi. Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  If you carpool for money, you're a taxi. And if you take a friend on your plane, and he gives you x€ afterwards for gas money, how is that illegal? I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
  - isaacdl 1y ago
    It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc. Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
    - hoistbypetard 1y ago
      > Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane. While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.
mattgrice 1y ago
If structured the right way, agricultural land has numerous tax benefits that can range based on jurisdiction from carve-outs on inheritance taxes all the way down to property tax exemptions on what could not even be considered a hobby farm (very large exurban lots)
- trallnag 1y ago
  In addition, government handouts. Also known as corporate welfare. Also known as subsidies.
  - ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
    Also known as protection against food insecurity.
farceSpherule 1y ago
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly. I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
  - danlitt 1y ago
    Subsidising food is quite different from subsidising farmers.
    - guyzero 1y ago
      Exactly. Farmers vote.
  - frankus 1y ago
    The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      Yeah, biofuels is more of a PR program. You could cut that one without any real harm, and you could definitely cut back on corn in general and promote some other stuff or move things around
      - 9rx 1y ago
        > You could cut that one without any real harm The risk is going back to the time where we left corn in piles to rot. That's not harmful in any kind of immediate sense, but losing that energy to waste heat instead of converting it back into usable energy is less than ideal. > and you could definitely cut back on corn It's not that you try to grow too much corn, but its yield can be pretty unpredictable. Last year, with favourable weather, yields around here were nearly 100 bushels per acre higher than pre-harvest estimates! That is a hell of a lot of extra product that nobody ever expected before the combines started rolling. And if you plan for those freak years every year, you're going to end up short more often than not. There is a lot of guesswork involved. That is what ethanol was originally intended to be: A way to buffer that guesswork. > in general and promote some other stuff Like what? 1. The consumer dictates what you grow. The consumer loves corn (mostly because it turns into meat). You'd have to compel the consumer to eat something else, and that is going to be one hell of an uphill battle. Many organizations have been trying to get people away from meat for decades and meat consumption is only going up. Meat doesn't necessarily have to come from corn, granted, but other options are more expensive. The consumer isn't going to pay more for meat either. 2. Corn equipment is compatible with other human foods (beans, wheat, etc.) that are also being grown in the crop rotation. If you expect a corn/bean/wheat farmer to start growing carrots in place of corn, good luck. They'd never be able to afford the capital expenditure to add carrot equipment to their lineup.
legitster 1y ago
> Eight states in the Corn Belt — Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin — restrict the size, structure and purpose of corporations that can own farmland to limit ownership by large investment funds. > More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP tag. Sangamon and Edgar counties were included in this analysis because historical data was not needed. The TL;DR is that Illinois is one of the few states where there aren't restrictions on farmland owners, and even there it's a small (if growing) problem. I think this is one of those problems that should theoretically be self-limiting. The economics of a farming family owning their land is too strong - just from the amount of tax breaks and subsidies available. Put another way, the land in a farmer's hands is worth more than in a corporation's. I think the real risk comes from large farm landholders who want to cash out of their farm but don't have an heir or successor lined up. Farmers are getting old and their kids more often than not don't want to run the family farm anymore and there simply aren't going to be any other buyers.
- Alive-in-2025 1y ago
  Selling the land that had been in the family for generations is what happened recently in my family. My dad (wealthy retired 80 year old engineer) unfortunately decided he wanted the money, instead of keeping it in the family. It has been in our family 150 years. None of us are farmers in the current family, but we had relatives who were still renting the land in the area. They couldn't afford to buy the land either. So no farmers in the family today doesn't make it obviously something that we can keep - still I was disappointed with the outcome. We sold it to some outside group. Apparently the best way to sell land today is an online action. You announce it ahead of time, there is a minimal amount to start bidding, and then like an ad auction, there is a minimal increment to go up by, fixed time limit of like a week to bid. I was really sad that it left the family. The sale price of the midwest farm land ended up about $10k an acre for cropland. The amount of money that renting brought in didn't seem like it would be enough for any young person to actually buy land at current prices. I am sure they'd have a lot of tax deductions but can they get a million dollar loan? I expect there will be houses put on the land eventually. I had an idea for how to keep it suitable for future farmland, which was to put solar power on it with a 20 year contract with a local power company (with everything removed after).
xnx 1y ago
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
- Ericson2314 1y ago
  Yes, cannot emphasize this enough. Farming is an industry, and we have take it seriously as one and stop romanticizing it. Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    The workplace is becoming increasingly abstract. I wonder if there'll be a time when cubicles and spreadsheets become an object of nostalgia or romantization.
    - roughly 1y ago
      wait people used to have walls separating them from their neighbors? and, like, 40sq feet to themselves? what the fuck?
  - franktankbank 1y ago
    What's wrong with holding in esteem the things that truly underpin our security in this country?
- quantummagic 1y ago
  The country wouldn't even exist without the electoral college. It was pivotal in uniting the states under a federal government, and is working as intended. Maybe the USA should be abandoned, and all ties between the states renegotiated, but you shouldn't be able to unilaterally change the terms of the deal.
  - 1y ago
jackcosgrove 1y ago
The headline is provocative, as some amount of corporate-owned farmland is owned by corporations that are in turn owned by farmers and their families. I would also push back on the notion that owner-operators are in a better position. It's more accurate to say that farmers who have assets of any kind are better off than those who don't have assets. As an example, generations back in my family we owned a lot of farmland. There were some bad investments made in the farming operation and we almost lost it all. This was in the early 1980s for those who are familiar. If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification. When people lionize farming owner-operators, they discount the risk that owner is taking by having so many assets concentrated in one operation. Now farmers do know about investing and diversification, and some do make the rational decision to cash out. Many also don't, for various reasons. But it's not totally fair to expect farmers to behave differently than other asset owners because farming is seen romantically or in terms of national security. This is a different argument than one which would decry the position of tenant farmers. Obviously being a tenant farmer owning nothing but equipment is harder than being a farmer who has $5 million invested somewhere else and rents the land he farms.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jrockway 1y ago
  Yeah. I think it's important to think about whether or not you want millions of dollars of assets tied up in land that you can farm. For example, I don't know how to farm, and I don't wish my 401(k) was land and structures... I am happy to have higher exposure to the wider economy. Obviously there are recessions and having your own vegetable farm and place to live is nice... but most of the time there isn't a cataclysmic recession, so you're leaving money on the table. Meanwhile, it's pretty easy to have a bad year farming. Weather. Pests. Having a lot of assets doesn't help you when they're not liquid and plants won't grow for a year.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
petcat 1y ago
This is such a contrast to upstate NY where farmland is still overwhelmingly owned by individuals and families. It was nearly 75% the last time I checked. And 70% is owner-operator (the owner is also the farmer). Only a very tiny percentage of active farmland is owned by an investment company.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  A report on NY farms and farmland, covering the 2012-2022 period. https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/profile-of-agriculture-in-nys.pdf https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/profile-of-agricult... It's interesting how little of NY state is farmland (21.6%). "When the extended family of the farmer is taken into consideration, 94.6 percent of New York farms are family-owned."
  - petcat 1y ago
    New York state has gone to great lengths over the last 40 years to highly incentivize (read: subsidize) local, family farmers and deter megacorp speculators and investors. At this point I think it's basically impossible to actually lose money on a farm as long as it's family/individual owner-operator. It's also why NY state cropland is among the most expensive in the country. Once you get it, the value will only ever go up regardless of crop yield in any given year.
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      I don't think that statement about the price of cropland in NY state is accurate. If you go to https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-prices https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-pr... you'll find it's not very expensive compared to, say, Illinois, California, or (!) New Jersey. It's well below the average for the country as a whole, in fact. A good deal of the farmland in the NY county where I live, Tompkins County, has gone back to forest since the beginning of the 20th century (although not to the extent in, say, Massachusetts). This suggests to me that just holding farmland here cannot be much of a moneymaker, since if it were we'd be seeing this land brought back. https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20043094067 https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/200430940...
arbor_day 1y ago
I own the farm and farm it in Illinois. I owe the land through an LLC, because farming is dangerous and I don't want to go bankrupt if somebody sues me. Farms are expensive and hard to subdivide, so people will put them into a legal entity and pass down to the next generation via a trust. All of my neighbors are doing the same, so we're all counted as "not farmers" here Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit -- not even better than holding t-bills. The margins get better as you get bigger but still not great. Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol. Everybody in your area will instantly know you're a big wig if you're one of the X family who has 2,000 acres all without the ick that comes with running other businesses. You can't buy that kind of status in my community with anything other than land.
- mbreese 1y ago
  It's buried in a figure legend, but the Tribune does acknowledge this too: > Note: The 12 selected counties had some of the highest cash rents in the state. For the purposes of this analysis, a business entity was defined as an organization with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co, Corp, LP or LLP tag. This land is not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses. Edit: apparently not that buried...
  - spyspy 1y ago
    It's not buried anywhere, it's literally the next paragraph after the lede. > These acres are not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses because they offer tax benefits and externalize losses.
    - mbreese 1y ago
      So it is... Chalk that up to my science reading skills -- I skimmed the text and skipped quickly to the charts, figures, and legends...
School-Cotton 1y ago
> Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land Isn’t this the historical norm? Anyway, we don’t live in a communist utopia, so most people don’t own their workplace, farmers or not.
SilverElfin 1y ago
Is this different from factories not being owned by the assembly line workers? Not saying it is right or wrong but I wonder why farming is treated differently. Even for me, seeing this headline makes me feel bad for farming and the idyllic view I have of it.
thescriptkiddie 1y ago
in the long view, much of the US's economic success (prior to the post-wwii economic miracle) can be attributed directly or indirectly to cheap and plentiful food. this of course means that farming is not a very profitable business. but that could change if a handful of large corporations buy up a plurality of the farms and exert their monopoly power to push prices up. this would be very bad.
nkmnz 1y ago
Most F1 pilots do not own the cars, the race tracks, or even the suits they're wearing while driving. Neither do they own the F1 organization, the F1 brand or any of the technology involved.
DonHopkins 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738071 and marked it off-topic. It's not OK to follow users around HN and attack them for things they've posted in other threads, no matter who they are, what the topic is or whatever was in the original comment that you found objectionable. That's not what we do here.
rjpower9000 1y ago
Part of the land — 120 of the nearly 700 acres — is rented from a family who owns multiple farm properties and wants their fields weed-free with perfectly straight grids of crops, a deep-rooted tradition among Midwestern farming communities. “They want that land to be clean corn and soybeans,” Bishop said. Before the restrictions, his father was growing organic corn and soybeans on part of the field and letting Bishop grow vegetables on the rest. I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, but the idea that you'd force someone else to create a mono-crop desert, not even out of a sense of efficiency, but _just because it looks right_, is just so frustrating.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
> In the same 20-year window, farmland owned by businesses with out-of-state mailing addresses increased by nearly 250%. they should have noted _what percentage_ of farmland is owned by out-of-state businesses; otherwise the 250% increase isn't meaningful
StillBored 1y ago
The US needs another Orville Freeman, someone who understands the intricacies of both economics and food production. Pretty much no-one in a position to affect subsidies and the legal system has a clue. And this isn't unique to the USA, watching Clarson's Farm is a prime example of a bunch of know-nothing politicians screwing things up. Which is how for example in TX, half of the rural community is getting AG exemptions on their property taxes, while not actually producing anything other than tax dodges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Freeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Freeman https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/42096/32945_aib729a3_002.pdf https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publica...
- prawn 1y ago
  I'm not from the US, so no idea if Thomas Massie would be anything approaching what you described? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie
fsckboy 1y ago
>Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers it's not a new phenomenon, most people who bought the farm do not follow through and till that land... ok ok, i'll stop. to people who are not native speakers of US English, "bought the farm" is a euphemism for dying https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buy_the_farm#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buy_the_farm#English from that link: "Etymology: Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use."
whyage 1y ago
If you want to be part owner of agricultural land, I couldn't recommend AcreTrader more. I've been investing with them for a few years now and the overall experience has been great. Too early to discuss profits yet as most investments are on a 5-10 year horizon.
smeeger 1y ago
why is it not viable to grow food with vertical hydroponic setups or whatever?
- prawn 1y ago
  Only suits particular crops. For most things, the infrastructure would be needlessly expensive. More viable to plant and harvest at scale with massive machinery.
blacksqr 1y ago
By definition, it is.

211 points by NaOH 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Forget China. The greatest threat to American freedom and global power is robber baron billionaires. We live in a full-on kleptocracy. It's about time we add some new amendments to the constitution to relevel the balance of powers.

cozzyd 1y ago
Fortunately the Illinois governor can be counted on to take a stand against billionaires.
- edwardbernays 1y ago
  true, we wish this brave and powerful man the best of luck as he takes on his matched opponents: the people in his socioeconomic bracket. amen.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    You jest, but the harsh truth is that almost no change in society is possible unless at least some of the societal elites are on the bandwagon.
    - keybored 1y ago
      ... or that's what they want you to believe
    - edwardbernays 1y ago
      It's both sardonic and genuine. If he's genuine, then I genuinely wish him the best luck. However, it is very hard for me to believe that any billionaire would ever do something generally disfavorable to the current billionaire class. It's even harder for me to believe that, if one of them was to do so, that it would not be for their own further gain, just to the detriment of their peer cohort. I'm a bit jaded from having been lied to too many times. Again, however, if he is genuine: I genuinely wish him the best luck taking on his matched opponents.
      - actionfromafar 1y ago
        Agreed.
- autoexec 1y ago
  I have to admit that for as corrupt as Illinois is, Pritzker has managed to support a few things which his billionaire buddies weren't too fond of. It's not all good, but it's better than I expected. He's called for higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor protections, higher minimum wages and better support for the poors.
  - cozzyd 1y ago
    Yeah I actually like JB, even though I'm somewhat uncomfortable with him being a billionaire.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
[flagged]
- Alive-in-2025 1y ago
  We have a lot of problems in the US but electing our own shyster based on lies to get a democratic president isn't going to fix the problem. We'll need a truth and reconciliation group after or if Trump gets out of power. We need significant reforms, like getting rid of the electoral college and making supreme court justices have term limits but also not be able to take bribes. Also the president should not have immunity - the unitary executive theory is incredibly dangerous and destructive.
snarf21 1y ago
The problem is that they have bought all three systems of government so they can do whatever they want. They own all the media as well. Even something like PBS that is supposed to be more independent is highly dependent on "philanthropy" from these same billionaires and they've fallen victim to what I'm going to moniker as Sinclair's Law ("It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends upon not understanding it" -Upton Sinclair)
keybored 1y ago
America just lives under capitalism.
- msgodel 1y ago
  There are plenty of countries that don't like capitalism. If you don't like it you can move to one of those. You can even go somewhere like the UK if you don't want to give up the US's anglo/protestant culture.
  - keybored 1y ago
    Tell my mother and friends (hypothetical) that. Where do you get off, honestly? You also changed the subject. I also don't live in the US.

thrance 1y ago

[flagged]

sophacles 1y ago

Right. Most of it is owned by the llc the farmer set up for thier land, and/or the family trust set up to prevent the land from being split into ever smaller parcels by inheritance.

perardi 1y ago
Yeah, that’s how my farm land is set up. I inherited farm land from my grandfather. I am very much not a farmer, I do not want to live in Southern Illinois, but I don’t want to give up the land, so I rent the land to a farmer with adjacent property. I realize that’s not really the point of this article—this is more about huge firms buying up non-trivial amounts of land.

exaldb 1y ago

https://archive.is/RgcAO https://archive.is/RgcAO

create-username 1y ago
Thanks. Got a plain made: “The content is not available in your region”. I’m actually happy the website content is a simple html document instead of JavaScript bloated with capitalism surveillance trackers

bell-cot 1y ago

If you look at history, this is an ancient pattern. In Judaeo-Christian scriptures, the prohibitions against anyone acquiring ownership of land go all the way back to the Torah. Though like pretty much every religious prohibition on behaviors which the well-to-do want to do - those commandments fall under the "we never talk about that part" rule. EDIT: - Please note my "against anyone ACQUIRING ownership of" phrasing, above. - Details are in Leviticus, Chapter 25

WillPostForFood 1y ago
There is no biblical prohibition against owning land, but there is plenty of debate, discussion and grappling with the problems of ownership and accumulation. It shows it always an issue, and rules and laws and social norms always need to be debated and changed.
- legitster 1y ago
  In the Levitical law, there was specifically a concept that all of the land in Israel be split up equally among families. And that ownership of the land reverts every 49 years. So "buying" land was tantamount to a lease. There is actually some interesting scholarly work that shows such a system would work perfectly fine within a modern capitalist system - it would reduce inequality and neatly lines up with natural debt cycles.
KaiserPro 1y ago
owning land? no, holding debt for longer than 7 years very much so. but you know, that interferes with commerce too much. (also part of the reason for huge amounts of anti-Semitism from about 1100-now )

dlcarrier 1y ago

Most farms are not owned by farmers, most housing is not owned by tenants, most airplanes are not owned by airlines, etc., etc.. Vertical integration can have benefits, but it isn't necessary and has drawbacks. Even when vertically integrated, regulations are often written under the assumption that everything is leased, not owned, so compliance is easier if you own a company that owns an asset, instead of owning that asset directly. For example, if two people carpool in a car that one of them owns, instead of hiring a taxi, they'll usually split the costs of the fuel and the wear on the car. On the other hand, if they were flying in a small airplane owned by one of them, it's illegal to split the costs of wear on the airplane, unless its a rental or air taxi. Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.

_9ptr 1y ago
If you carpool for money, you're a taxi. And if you take a friend on your plane, and he gives you x€ afterwards for gas money, how is that illegal? I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
- isaacdl 1y ago
  It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc. Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
  - hoistbypetard 1y ago
    > Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane. While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.

mattgrice 1y ago

If structured the right way, agricultural land has numerous tax benefits that can range based on jurisdiction from carve-outs on inheritance taxes all the way down to property tax exemptions on what could not even be considered a hobby farm (very large exurban lots)

trallnag 1y ago
In addition, government handouts. Also known as corporate welfare. Also known as subsidies.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
  Also known as protection against food insecurity.

farceSpherule 1y ago

How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.

nemomarx 1y ago
If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly. I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
- danlitt 1y ago
  Subsidising food is quite different from subsidising farmers.
  - guyzero 1y ago
    Exactly. Farmers vote.
- frankus 1y ago
  The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    Yeah, biofuels is more of a PR program. You could cut that one without any real harm, and you could definitely cut back on corn in general and promote some other stuff or move things around
    - 9rx 1y ago
      > You could cut that one without any real harm The risk is going back to the time where we left corn in piles to rot. That's not harmful in any kind of immediate sense, but losing that energy to waste heat instead of converting it back into usable energy is less than ideal. > and you could definitely cut back on corn It's not that you try to grow too much corn, but its yield can be pretty unpredictable. Last year, with favourable weather, yields around here were nearly 100 bushels per acre higher than pre-harvest estimates! That is a hell of a lot of extra product that nobody ever expected before the combines started rolling. And if you plan for those freak years every year, you're going to end up short more often than not. There is a lot of guesswork involved. That is what ethanol was originally intended to be: A way to buffer that guesswork. > in general and promote some other stuff Like what? 1. The consumer dictates what you grow. The consumer loves corn (mostly because it turns into meat). You'd have to compel the consumer to eat something else, and that is going to be one hell of an uphill battle. Many organizations have been trying to get people away from meat for decades and meat consumption is only going up. Meat doesn't necessarily have to come from corn, granted, but other options are more expensive. The consumer isn't going to pay more for meat either. 2. Corn equipment is compatible with other human foods (beans, wheat, etc.) that are also being grown in the crop rotation. If you expect a corn/bean/wheat farmer to start growing carrots in place of corn, good luck. They'd never be able to afford the capital expenditure to add carrot equipment to their lineup.

legitster 1y ago

> Eight states in the Corn Belt — Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin — restrict the size, structure and purpose of corporations that can own farmland to limit ownership by large investment funds. > More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP tag. Sangamon and Edgar counties were included in this analysis because historical data was not needed. The TL;DR is that Illinois is one of the few states where there aren't restrictions on farmland owners, and even there it's a small (if growing) problem. I think this is one of those problems that should theoretically be self-limiting. The economics of a farming family owning their land is too strong - just from the amount of tax breaks and subsidies available. Put another way, the land in a farmer's hands is worth more than in a corporation's. I think the real risk comes from large farm landholders who want to cash out of their farm but don't have an heir or successor lined up. Farmers are getting old and their kids more often than not don't want to run the family farm anymore and there simply aren't going to be any other buyers.

Alive-in-2025 1y ago
Selling the land that had been in the family for generations is what happened recently in my family. My dad (wealthy retired 80 year old engineer) unfortunately decided he wanted the money, instead of keeping it in the family. It has been in our family 150 years. None of us are farmers in the current family, but we had relatives who were still renting the land in the area. They couldn't afford to buy the land either. So no farmers in the family today doesn't make it obviously something that we can keep - still I was disappointed with the outcome. We sold it to some outside group. Apparently the best way to sell land today is an online action. You announce it ahead of time, there is a minimal amount to start bidding, and then like an ad auction, there is a minimal increment to go up by, fixed time limit of like a week to bid. I was really sad that it left the family. The sale price of the midwest farm land ended up about $10k an acre for cropland. The amount of money that renting brought in didn't seem like it would be enough for any young person to actually buy land at current prices. I am sure they'd have a lot of tax deductions but can they get a million dollar loan? I expect there will be houses put on the land eventually. I had an idea for how to keep it suitable for future farmland, which was to put solar power on it with a 20 year contract with a local power company (with everything removed after).

xnx 1y ago

Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.

Ericson2314 1y ago
Yes, cannot emphasize this enough. Farming is an industry, and we have take it seriously as one and stop romanticizing it. Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  The workplace is becoming increasingly abstract. I wonder if there'll be a time when cubicles and spreadsheets become an object of nostalgia or romantization.
  - roughly 1y ago
    wait people used to have walls separating them from their neighbors? and, like, 40sq feet to themselves? what the fuck?
- franktankbank 1y ago
  What's wrong with holding in esteem the things that truly underpin our security in this country?
quantummagic 1y ago
The country wouldn't even exist without the electoral college. It was pivotal in uniting the states under a federal government, and is working as intended. Maybe the USA should be abandoned, and all ties between the states renegotiated, but you shouldn't be able to unilaterally change the terms of the deal.
- 1y ago

jackcosgrove 1y ago

The headline is provocative, as some amount of corporate-owned farmland is owned by corporations that are in turn owned by farmers and their families. I would also push back on the notion that owner-operators are in a better position. It's more accurate to say that farmers who have assets of any kind are better off than those who don't have assets. As an example, generations back in my family we owned a lot of farmland. There were some bad investments made in the farming operation and we almost lost it all. This was in the early 1980s for those who are familiar. If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification. When people lionize farming owner-operators, they discount the risk that owner is taking by having so many assets concentrated in one operation. Now farmers do know about investing and diversification, and some do make the rational decision to cash out. Many also don't, for various reasons. But it's not totally fair to expect farmers to behave differently than other asset owners because farming is seen romantically or in terms of national security. This is a different argument than one which would decry the position of tenant farmers. Obviously being a tenant farmer owning nothing but equipment is harder than being a farmer who has $5 million invested somewhere else and rents the land he farms.

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jrockway 1y ago
Yeah. I think it's important to think about whether or not you want millions of dollars of assets tied up in land that you can farm. For example, I don't know how to farm, and I don't wish my 401(k) was land and structures... I am happy to have higher exposure to the wider economy. Obviously there are recessions and having your own vegetable farm and place to live is nice... but most of the time there isn't a cataclysmic recession, so you're leaving money on the table. Meanwhile, it's pretty easy to have a bad year farming. Weather. Pests. Having a lot of assets doesn't help you when they're not liquid and plants won't grow for a year.

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petcat 1y ago

This is such a contrast to upstate NY where farmland is still overwhelmingly owned by individuals and families. It was nearly 75% the last time I checked. And 70% is owner-operator (the owner is also the farmer). Only a very tiny percentage of active farmland is owned by an investment company.

pfdietz 1y ago
A report on NY farms and farmland, covering the 2012-2022 period. https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/profile-of-agriculture-in-nys.pdf https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/profile-of-agricult... It's interesting how little of NY state is farmland (21.6%). "When the extended family of the farmer is taken into consideration, 94.6 percent of New York farms are family-owned."
- petcat 1y ago
  New York state has gone to great lengths over the last 40 years to highly incentivize (read: subsidize) local, family farmers and deter megacorp speculators and investors. At this point I think it's basically impossible to actually lose money on a farm as long as it's family/individual owner-operator. It's also why NY state cropland is among the most expensive in the country. Once you get it, the value will only ever go up regardless of crop yield in any given year.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    I don't think that statement about the price of cropland in NY state is accurate. If you go to https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-prices https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-pr... you'll find it's not very expensive compared to, say, Illinois, California, or (!) New Jersey. It's well below the average for the country as a whole, in fact. A good deal of the farmland in the NY county where I live, Tompkins County, has gone back to forest since the beginning of the 20th century (although not to the extent in, say, Massachusetts). This suggests to me that just holding farmland here cannot be much of a moneymaker, since if it were we'd be seeing this land brought back. https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20043094067 https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/200430940...

arbor_day 1y ago

I own the farm and farm it in Illinois. I owe the land through an LLC, because farming is dangerous and I don't want to go bankrupt if somebody sues me. Farms are expensive and hard to subdivide, so people will put them into a legal entity and pass down to the next generation via a trust. All of my neighbors are doing the same, so we're all counted as "not farmers" here Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit -- not even better than holding t-bills. The margins get better as you get bigger but still not great. Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol. Everybody in your area will instantly know you're a big wig if you're one of the X family who has 2,000 acres all without the ick that comes with running other businesses. You can't buy that kind of status in my community with anything other than land.

mbreese 1y ago
It's buried in a figure legend, but the Tribune does acknowledge this too: > Note: The 12 selected counties had some of the highest cash rents in the state. For the purposes of this analysis, a business entity was defined as an organization with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co, Corp, LP or LLP tag. This land is not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses. Edit: apparently not that buried...
- spyspy 1y ago
  It's not buried anywhere, it's literally the next paragraph after the lede. > These acres are not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses because they offer tax benefits and externalize losses.
  - mbreese 1y ago
    So it is... Chalk that up to my science reading skills -- I skimmed the text and skipped quickly to the charts, figures, and legends...

School-Cotton 1y ago

> Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land Isn’t this the historical norm? Anyway, we don’t live in a communist utopia, so most people don’t own their workplace, farmers or not.

SilverElfin 1y ago

Is this different from factories not being owned by the assembly line workers? Not saying it is right or wrong but I wonder why farming is treated differently. Even for me, seeing this headline makes me feel bad for farming and the idyllic view I have of it.

thescriptkiddie 1y ago

in the long view, much of the US's economic success (prior to the post-wwii economic miracle) can be attributed directly or indirectly to cheap and plentiful food. this of course means that farming is not a very profitable business. but that could change if a handful of large corporations buy up a plurality of the farms and exert their monopoly power to push prices up. this would be very bad.

nkmnz 1y ago

Most F1 pilots do not own the cars, the race tracks, or even the suits they're wearing while driving. Neither do they own the F1 organization, the F1 brand or any of the technology involved.

DonHopkins 1y ago

[flagged]

tomhow 1y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738071 and marked it off-topic. It's not OK to follow users around HN and attack them for things they've posted in other threads, no matter who they are, what the topic is or whatever was in the original comment that you found objectionable. That's not what we do here.

rjpower9000 1y ago

Part of the land — 120 of the nearly 700 acres — is rented from a family who owns multiple farm properties and wants their fields weed-free with perfectly straight grids of crops, a deep-rooted tradition among Midwestern farming communities. “They want that land to be clean corn and soybeans,” Bishop said. Before the restrictions, his father was growing organic corn and soybeans on part of the field and letting Bishop grow vegetables on the rest. I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, but the idea that you'd force someone else to create a mono-crop desert, not even out of a sense of efficiency, but _just because it looks right_, is just so frustrating.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

> In the same 20-year window, farmland owned by businesses with out-of-state mailing addresses increased by nearly 250%. they should have noted _what percentage_ of farmland is owned by out-of-state businesses; otherwise the 250% increase isn't meaningful

StillBored 1y ago

The US needs another Orville Freeman, someone who understands the intricacies of both economics and food production. Pretty much no-one in a position to affect subsidies and the legal system has a clue. And this isn't unique to the USA, watching Clarson's Farm is a prime example of a bunch of know-nothing politicians screwing things up. Which is how for example in TX, half of the rural community is getting AG exemptions on their property taxes, while not actually producing anything other than tax dodges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Freeman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Freeman https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/42096/32945_aib729a3_002.pdf https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publica...

prawn 1y ago
I'm not from the US, so no idea if Thomas Massie would be anything approaching what you described? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie

fsckboy 1y ago

>Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers it's not a new phenomenon, most people who bought the farm do not follow through and till that land... ok ok, i'll stop. to people who are not native speakers of US English, "bought the farm" is a euphemism for dying https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buy_the_farm#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buy_the_farm#English from that link: "Etymology: Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use."

whyage 1y ago

If you want to be part owner of agricultural land, I couldn't recommend AcreTrader more. I've been investing with them for a few years now and the overall experience has been great. Too early to discuss profits yet as most investments are on a 5-10 year horizon.

smeeger 1y ago

why is it not viable to grow food with vertical hydroponic setups or whatever?

prawn 1y ago
Only suits particular crops. For most things, the infrastructure would be needlessly expensive. More viable to plant and harvest at scale with massive machinery.

blacksqr 1y ago

By definition, it is.