“Imagine a country where ideologues bent on land reform turn agriculture into the plaything of the world’s richest investors, and poor local farmers are locked out of millions of acres prime agricultural land. Then stop imagining some African country run by a despot and his friends and start picturing the United States. Rural America is on the cusp of one of the greatest transfers of land in its history and no one’s talking about it.”
This is the introduction to a Civil Eats article that highlights the growing trend of investors, including foreign interests, buying up huge parcels of U.S. farmland.
From the article:
“American farmers are getting older; they average 58 years old. Their nest egg is their land and they’re increasingly worried about health care and retirement income. So over the next 20 years, 400 million acres of farm land will crumble through the hands of families that historically farmed, scooped up by the highest bidders. Those bidders are likely to be far richer than the young farmers who would like a chance at their own land stake. And they’re likely to be absentee owners.”
The time is now to begin to seek solutions to keep the land in the hands of farmers. Our future depends on it.
Read the whole article that asks for how much longer this land will be our land.
