Who will own farmland in the future?

[jrdwyer]

I have much respect for farmers and their way of life. While I did not grow up on a farm, I spent my youth detasseling corn and walking beans and now I often do forestry work for farm families. I believe if my parents had been farmers, that would be my profession today.

I recently read a few articles concerning farmland being purchased or leased by investors (for higher returns, or course) and governments (in order to bypass purchasing grain on the open markets) in African countries . The governments involved call it food security. Here are the links:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/aug2009/gb2009083_487801_page_5.htm

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13692889

I know little about African countries other than they have a history of great economic and political instability. My gut reaction concerning the buying (or taking) of lands in such countries is that it will fail.

This also brings to mind the exporting of grains and meat from Ireland to England during the Great Famine of 1845-1852, when at the same time, a million people starved to death because the potato crops failed and there was no other food to eat. I am of Irish decent.

Reading this type of thing makes my grateful for being a citizen of the United States and having a stable government and good private property rights.

[jim king]

JR:
Having lived in the third world more of my life than I have lived in the States I have a few jaded opinions on this subject.  By the way when I was young I lived close to you in Tell City for a couple of years and went thru Evansville once a month on our way back to the farm in Wisconsin for a few days.

In Africa we have seen the result of the land grab by Magabe and the starvation and inflation it caused.  I lived in West Africa for 8 years and the buzz word of the time was the "Green revolution".  It was an effort to create a farming base that could feed the people, it failed miserably.  In the last few years we have seen the displaced farmers from Zimbabwe resetteling in Nigeria and other West African countries and they have in effect created a true green revoultion and are very successful.  Why do you ask?¿  They are farmers and know what they are doing.

The same can be said here in the Amazon with respect to palm oil plantations , fish farming , forestry or drilling for oil.  The successful ones come from outside and invest and WORK plus they have the knowledge from experience and not theory from a book.

In my opinion all third world countries need more imigrants as they are traditionally the hardest working people in a society.  The US of America was created by hard working imigrants from many nations who all pooled thier specialties to make a nation.  That is what is lacking in the third world.   We dont need the World Bank throwing money in the river as it rarely if ever does anything. 

I feel quite confident that the majority of the projects mentioned in the two articles will not succeed with a sure exception to the Chinese as they bring the people to work, manage and teach from experience.

Just my opinion.  The people who migrate to these places become successful if they can take it.  The local people in the third world in many cases have not yet learned to till the soil as the Europeans learned hundreds of years ago.  The mix of the two is benificial to both.

I have little little or no faith in mega projects for food production.  I believe in one family at a time.

[ARKANSAWYER]

  Corps will own the farm land.  It will be like the developers of now where they can throw you off your land to build a new shopping mall.  Soon they will learn that not enough people are growing food and so clear the land and farm it "ditch to ditch".  Next will be over the water to make the crops grow.   The US Gov is now working on keeping small farmers from growing and selling crops.  If you give away or sell stuff from your back yard garden you will be breaking the law.  So General Mills and Conagra and such will own the land and farm it and sell you the food you need.  It will not be as much food as you have now as the new Health Care Plan will tell you are fat so cut back your food allocation.   Every time I travel out I see where farm land has a new golf course and more condos on it.  THere is really only so much farm land.   I know that here it takes 3.5 acres of grass to feed one cow off the land.  How much land to feed just one person?  How much farm land to feed the 6 billion people of the world?   China takes lots of food and farms just about every inch they can.   Nothing like hunger to make you want to kill your neighbor.

[Warbird]

It is the classic 'over-population' question.  The more people crammed into a small area, the more 'socialist' they must be to survive.  At least, this is the conclusion I have come to after thinking about it a while.

[beenthere]

Becoming "socialist" is what they gravitate towards, but it doesn't work. Eastern Germany is a very good example. They ended up with the good farmland, but could not feed themselves under socialism. People who would work hard to compete, just give up under socialism and "let the other guy" work hard to the point no one works hard, unless forced.

[moonhill]

The Green Revolution is based on fossil fuel.  As a hypothetical scenario, what would happen if fossil fuel ran out or became cost prohibitive?  Population control would happen.

Tim

[DanG]

It is the classic 'over-population' question.  The more people crammed into a small area, the more 'socialist' they must be to survive. 

I agree with that first sentence, but disagree with the second. Over-population is the root of most of our problems, but the closer we live, the more freedoms we need.  We haven't seen real hunger in this Country in a long time, but if we do, we need to be free to grow something to eat!  We cannot be restrained by neighborhood associations telling us how to clip our lawn, when we need to grow some turnips on it, nor can we tolerate the Govt telling us what we cannot do with our land.  I've been in a couple of third world countries myself, and those people survive by getting every crumb they can find.  Having running water is a huge status symbol in some of those places, and unheard of in others.  Those are the things that such governmental systems as Socialism, Fascism, and other forms of dictatorships bring you.  It doesn't matter which one it is, they are all the same.  Communism was supposed to be a government of and for the people, but it wasn't.  The greatest of all the Communist regimes only lasted 60 years under the iron fist of Socialism, and ended with their people near starvation!  The only system on the face of this Earth that has ever worked is the one we have here in The United States of America, and we are on the verge of pithing it away in favor of Socialism!  People, it takes guts to resist the temptations of empty promises.  We absolutely MUST keep our heads about us and refuse to allow despotism in any form to take us over!

ps:  Warbird, you probably didn't mean that statement quite the way I took it at first.  Don't let it bother you.  It was a good segue for what I wanted to say. ;)

[Warbird]

No worries.  What I typed didn't come out quite right and you guys were right to jump on it.  For the record, I agree, I simply get disgruntled by the trend toward socialism as our cities fill up with more and more people.

[WildDog]

A high proportion of the better cropping country in my state now faces being stuffed by mining giants chasing the underground coal, there is overseas interest in these areas such as China, chasing coal.

A strip of highly fertile red farming country that I have admired, near the town of Inverell is now being targeted for its rich Bauxite reserves.   

Our safe rainfall country is being bought up by large corporations which does including privately owned family partnerships chasing comodity of scale, this hopefully will remain for farming however it is a problem for a young person starting out without a heap of capital, it is out of their reach to buy a viable farm that makes a living, not long ago it was the norm that a farm should pay for itself in 10 years. Cattle grazing country was worth about $1500 a cow and calf unit now it is a least 4 times that, while weaner calves have probaly risen only 10% in price.

The problem I see is the valuable farming country is where the interest for mining lies whereas we have a lot of wether country (merino wool growing areas not even suitable to even sheep breeding) that holds little interest, this country is going backwards as wool prices are dropping while opperation costs are rising.

One exception to this is the Lightening Ridge area that has the only black opals in the world, it is hard mongel country and has been exhausted of opals so the miners are now targeting local grazing properties to expand there opperations, as the miners don't usually reinstate the land after mining and there is little top soil, graziers are saying they will just have to walk off. The opals are pretty but you can't eat them. My own farm has saphire claims on it but I hold the irrigation rights, a saphire miner said to me the other day saphires have come up in price and are the new "Europe Gold" :(  most of my creek has already been mined (with exception of under our house) so hopefully we'll be O.K.

I am not against progresion but lets fill our stomacks first.

[SwampDonkey]

What we have also lost since my grandfather's time in the farming business is folks willing to give a friendly hand with the knowledge that tomorrow someone in the community was going to be available to help me to.

I've seen small farms here support large families because they worked together (like a commune that has lasted for well over 100 years) not only family members but members of their faith. While a farm 10 times larger struggles or gets turned over 3 or 4 times in 10 years, snow balling in size as it's amalgamated to other farms. The big farmer competes with other big farmers who may be quite interested in how they are doing but would be just as happy if the processor bought all his potatoes and put him on the "top ten list" and let his neighbor's potatoes rot in the bins that were equally as good. No operating loan for you says the bank, because you have no contract with the processor this year. Oh, I see your farm is for auction says the processor, I guess we'll take it. :

Wilddog, the farmer always takes the hit in price. I look for wool products, now it's mixed mostly with synthetics made off shore. No, not always China but dirt poor nations in Central America and Middle Asia. Those garments wave old brand names and great big prices. A cashmere sweeter only has to have about 15% cashmere apparently, because that's about the most I see on labels. Then, the accompanying fibrer that is used is usually a derivative of rayon and they don't compliment one another too well because the wool fibre does not weave well to it. Take your sweeter off and your undershirt is still wearing the wool. :

Just next door, they have 1 green house they start in March growing lettuce and beat greens. In the summer they grow root crops, maybe a tiny acreage of corn, beans and this year seems most of the farm is buckwheat (I gotta have my pancakes ;) ) They gather produce all week in the summer and it's hand washed and loaded up for a farmer's market 100 miles away where they have a booth on Saturdays. The old man (not really old) came there with about a dozen children 3 years ago and he had one son that he got married off. Son was left to take over the farm while he and the family moved on and possibly starting another farm. But, I have seen as many as 6 young people and none would be 20 years old work there in the summer farming. They seem to be paying the bills and eating good. The neighbor that lived there before grew up and farmed as his father did, his only son wasn't much for the farm business as it turns out, but he grew up in a family of 4 siblings off that tiny farm. The old man never had more than 100 acres of potatoes and maybe 25 milk cows and little fields he rented to grow oats and some taters. A lot of the acreage on his home farm was just hay fields. He never bought brand new and never owed anyone anything. Most of the hired hands on these farms can only be provided employment on a seasonal basis and not enough to survive on because who can live off 2-3 days of work at $10 an hour and how long are they going to be loyal and stick around or care whether they even get out of bed or insure a car to get there?

[DanG]

Getting back to Warbird's post # 3, I think the term he meant to use was "socialized."  If that's the case, the statement was right on.  Socialized is just the opposite of self-sufficiency, and the more crammed in people are, the less self-sufficient they can be.  You can't raise much food in an apartment, so you pay others to raise it for you, etc.  That is a far cry from Socialism, which is a political arrangement that oppresses, and suppresses a person's opportunities and incentives.

Before people were socialized, everyone had to do everything for themselves.  Then it occurred to someone that they could do better if each did one thing.  The small farmer was just about the last group to become socialized, but they finally made it.  Almost all farms these days are specialized, and produce only a few types of products, meaning that the families that own them are socialized.  However, as long as they still own the land and their freedom, they can go back to self-sufficiency to whatever degree their capabilities allow.  They can co-exist with a socialized society, but not with a Socialist society.

[Polly]

around here f h a  owns a lot of it ,most farmers can barely keep up the interest payments let alone pay off the principal :( :(

[Tim/South]

In the "old" days we always raised a large garden for our selves and also some truck crops to sell. I remember my grandfather not planting certain crops because a neighbor always planted extra and we swapped. All of us families who had dirt digging in our DNA traded with each other and it seemed so natural back then.
Now I only grow a little hay and raised a few head of cattle. I have not plowed and planted much over an acre in years.

This past year I had people stop and ask if I rented "plots" for people to grow vegetable gardens. That concept seemed very strange to me. Had my little podunk community become so "uppity" that growing your own veggies was now the in thing to do?
It really made me stop and think about how much my local environment had gradually changed over the last 30 years.
Now and then someone will stop and make a ridiculously low offer for a piece of my "pasture land that is not being used".
Last year a real estate lady made an offer "I could not refuse".
Neither the city slicker or the real estate person seems to understand that I wear overalls because of choice and not necessity. Neither could answer the question of where my cows would graze if I sold the piece land?
Looking around I now realize there are only a few of the old farms still intact in my community.
I am glad both my son and daughter love the land and understand our name has been on some of the deeds since the mid 1800's.
There are some things money just can not buy even if you are down to eating beans and cornbread.

[SwampDonkey]

Nothing wrong with beans and cornbread.    8)

[WH_Conley]

I'll take a bowl anytime.

[SwampDonkey]

Up here in the north, the old fashioned way to cook a baked bean is in a fire pit in the ground all day. We call'm "bean-hole beans", they do in Maine as well. That's the way they did it in the lumber camps in my grandfather's time and before. Mom and dad just had a feed of'm down at the lumberman's museum in Patton, Maine. They went with folks that grow baking beans in Woodstock. They grow 3 varieties mentioned in this article.

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/me/beans_1

[Tim/South]

Nothing wrong with beans and cornbread.    8)

I agree.
But after about a week my wife says it gets old. ;)

Rather than go into the "emergency" money, but more to make a point, we went on a bean diet many years ago. It was after a hasty expenditure was made with out my consultation. "Someone" spent the grocery money.
I figured if she stayed, I had a keeper.
That was 27 years ago and we have never eaten beans out of necessity since.

[Magicman]

Since we individually don't grow enough food to sustain ourselves, we are dependent on mega-marts.  When a hurricane comes through, of course we loose power.  Without power the stores close.  It doesn't take many days until folks panic.  I own my tree farm, but I don't actually grow anything to eat besides our garden and that's seasonal.

[SwampDonkey]

I know of a lot of folks that lived off beans, bread and molasses and maybe some milk and eggs.

[Kodiakmac]

There's absolutely no question about who will own Canadian farmland:  the governments and the Environmental NGOs. 

Despite our national superiority complex about our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there is no "right to use, own and enjoy property" in our Constitution.  This has left the door wide open for the mtual benefit of our governments and the NGOs. 

On a regular basis, some new piece of environmental legislation imposes yet another restriction on land use, yet the majority of farmers and their farm organizations are more concerned about subsidy cheques, grants and protecting unsustainable supply-mangement marketing systems, than they are about the greater danger of collectivism that is occurring before their eyes.

The fact that I'll be able to sit back in my old age and say "I told you so" doesn't bring me much happiness.

[Magicman]

Not good.... >:( >:(   At least we think that we own ours..... :

[WildDog]

I have concerns with the continual cutting up of larger viable stand alone farms into smaller parcels with the end result a heap of hobby/lifestyle farms.

These smaller farms are O.K. if the owners have the knowledge and off farm income etc to care for weeds, pest animals, fences and such but one main problem is the loss of jobs for farm hands as these. I find a lot of the time city people chasing the "tree change" are taking up these blocks and don't always possess the tolerance to farming like noise from saw mills, chainsaws, tractors, pumps, the dust kicked up by vehicles on dirt roads and in my job where I issue permits to graze livestock on roads I get complaints from people driving through cow pats.


http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=7259177&f=0&p=10&t=rur&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=1423078&s=nsw&snf=rbs&tm=1250886776

This is my 1st time trying to post a link not sure if its going to work, its a farm near mine that was offered as a whole for around 4million but didn't sell and is now offered as 3 separate parcells.

[Roxie]

The farms and (failed) horse farmettes in this area are snapped up by the Amish.  Whether public auction or private sale, they are there cash in hand.  Thank God. 

[SwampDonkey]

A lot of farms in the last 15 years have been purchased by similar folk here. But, I know many are not "cash in hand" sales. Our government has been known to lease at $1 an acre for 5 years and then a purchase is made for so much on the dollar. Not too many sold here with out big brother's hand.  And hardly ever a purchase based on true market fairness. I've seen a lot of crooked stuff go on, believe me. 

[Polly]

polly just came in from the garden with extra sweet sugar corn cucumbers white half runner beans squash potatoes and she just hollered for supper i gotta go  8) 8) :D