And from an agricultural perspective, the region surrounding Walla Walla and the Horse Heaven Hills has evolved into a commercial hub, complete with controlled atmosphere CA storage, state-of-the-art transportation infrastructure, and ready access to low-cost hydropower.
These are a few of the reasons why savvy investors have been plowing millions of dollars into farmland on both the Oregon and the Washington sides of the Columbia River Gorge. In , when Circles sold, it was even better. More often than not, farmland sales involve hundreds of acres. Thousand-acre transactions — such as the sale of 6, acre Weidert Farm to Farmland L. Tens of thousands of acres? Only sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors can stroke a check for tracts in that league, which is exactly what occurred on the sell side of the Circles transaction: The seller was John Hancock Life Insurance, a multibillion-dollar asset manager with key holdings in all the major US markets as well as Canada and Australia.
The story went dark on the buy side, however. Given the size and cost of Circles, both of those figures made no sense at all. Strike two. How about Google Maps? An aerial image of the Highway address revealed a small metal-sided building off by itself in the woods.
Strike three, right? I forwarded the lead to our Land Report Research Team. Minutes later, a terse response arrived:. Over the next five years, AgCoA acquired more than , acres in nine states. The very next year, however, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began shedding these very same farmland assets as quickly as it had acquired them. And it did this so quietly one might even say it was done in secret.
There was no public announcement, and no notice in the business press. Credit Chris Janiec at Agri Investor for this eagle-eyed investigating. The acreage sits off Interstate 10, and it is poised to be accessible by Interstate 11, a proposed highway that would traverse 5 miles of the square-mile holding. At buildout, the Belmont development will create a brand-new metropolis, one similar in size to the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, home to Arizona State University and almost , residents.
According to The Arizona Republic , Belmont is projected to include up to 80, homes; 3, acres of industrial, office, and retail space; 3, acres of open space; and acres for public schools. In January , The Land Report announced the launch of a sustainability standard that was developed by US farmland owners and operators.
Currently, more than 2 million acres in 22 states and an additional 2 million acres in seven countries are represented. Embed this chart Download higher resolution chart pixels by , dpi. The study provides both a descriptive baseline analysis of land ownership and a more detailed look at several aspects of land tenure, including non-operator landlords, rental agreements, the acquisition and transfer of land, and how decisionmaking is shared by landlords and their tenants.
For the ERS report and related interactive charts, see:. Approximately 39 percent of the million acres of farmland in the contiguous 48 States was rented. More than half of cropland is rented, compared with just over 25 percent of pastureland. In general, rental activity is concentrated in grain production areas; cash grains such as rice, corn, soybeans, and wheat, and also cotton, are commonly grown in areas where over 50 percent of farmland is rented.
Smaller family farm operators are more likely to be full owners of land they operate. Forty-five percent of farmland is in small family farms, and nearly half 46 percent of this land is found in operations that own all the land they operate.
Fifty-one percent of land in farms is in midsize and larger family farm operations, which are most commonly a mixture of rented and owned land. Nonfamily farms account for 4 percent of all farmland, 28 percent of which is found in full-owner operations. The majority of rented acres are owned by non-operator landlords. Eighty percent of rented farmland million acres, 30 percent of all farmland is owned by non-operator landlords, those that own land used in agricultural production but are not actively involved in farming.
Like wealth, land ownership is becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a greater push for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming techniques to generate greater returns.
The biggest shift in recent years from small to big farms was in the US. Small farmers and Indigenous people are more cautious with the use of land. The average person has nothing in common with mega-landowners like Bill Gates or Ted Turner. The land we all live on should not be the sole property of a few. The extensive tax avoidance by these titans of industry will always far exceed their supposed charitable donations to the public.
He is an assistant professor in the American studies department at the University of New Mexico. In , he co-founded The Red Nation , an Indigenous resistance organization. This article is more than 7 months old. Nick Estes. The relationship to land — who owns it, who works it, and who cares for it — reflects obscene levels of inequality and legacies of colonialism and white supremacy.
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