Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023 Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Massive amounts of money + thousands of acres = shutting out the ‘small guys’
Agricultural land has nearly always been viewed as a “good” investment. Some economists have labeled it as “inflation proof” because of its generally reliable profits and the industry’s steady support from lawmakers.
But as land prices have continued to climb — steeply — so too are concerns rising about the level of investment by consolidated corporate farming operations as well as investment firms, hedge funds and other non-traditional players.
Some say such concerns over rising prices and the influence of investment ownership is overblown. Regardless, the impacts of the trend are all too real, and include, as an example, pricing out smaller farmers and individual would-be farmers by a very wide margin.
“The small guys can’t compete,” said one Missouri farmer who recently sold his fourth-generation family farm to an out-of-state, corporate-backed buyer.
Investigate Midwest and InvestigateTV, Gray Television’s national investigative team, spent several months poring over records, analyzing data and conducting interviews to get a baseline look at U.S. farmland ownership and how it has changed. And to ask whether it is a boom or a bubble soon to burst.
— Erin Orr, executive director and managing editor
Secret Acres: Boom or bubble? High farmland prices encourage investors, concern farmers
By Emily Featherston, InvestigateTV and Madison McVan, Investigate Midwest
Longtime Missouri farmer Darvin Bentlage said it made sense for him physically to cut back on his farmland.
“My father, I watched him deteriorate on the farm and the ‘want to’ was still there, but the ability to do the job was not, and so I didn’t want to put my kids in that situation,” he said.
Not wanting to burden his children, however, goes further for Bentlage — he has discouraged his children from pursuing his trade, even if it means the generational legacy stops with him.
Read more.
GRAPHIC: Eastern, northeastern states have been the most successful in their applications for USDA’s conservation programs
By Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest and Report for America corps member
During this period, only three out of 10 landowner applications for the two main programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), received funding between 2018 and 2022, according to Investigate Midwest's analysis of application and funding data the USDA provided The Gazette.
View the graphic.
Year-end giving campaign update: Every dollar helps
We are in the final weeks of our year-end giving campaign, and we are getting close to one of our goals. Investigate Midwest is part of the NewsMatch program, which is supported by the Knight Foundation to benefit nonprofit news (like us!). Every individual gift (up to $1,000) is doubled until we reach $15,000. As of Thursday morning, we are close to that goal! It's not too late to give, and each dollar matters!
Mary Ungs-Sogaard, Donor Relations Manager
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Nonstop dredging kept the Mississippi River open this year, but moving mountains of sand creates its own problems By the Star Tribune
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public as a watchdog over influential corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism.
