The land that we buy is used for a variety of purposes, including food production, wind farming, carbon offsets, and grazing livestock. It’s important for us to understand your agricultural operation, and visit your property multiple times before making a purchase to make sure it matches your needs. We also offer financing for land purchases, as well as value added processing loans to help you make more money off your crop by turning it into food products.
While We buy U.S. land grabbing is more of a threat to food security in low- and middle-income countries, it’s happening in the United States too. The amount of farmland owned by foreign entities doubled from 2009 to 2019, and some lawmakers are concerned about the impact on U.S. agriculture and national security.
One of the biggest issues is a lack of transparency. The government doesn’t have a clear picture of how much farmland is owned by foreign entities, and the data that does exist is often inaccurate and outdated. The current law governing these sales, the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), requires foreign investors to report their land purchases, but there’s little oversight and no penalties for non-reporting—and most of the information that is available to the public comes from self-reporting by farmers.
Another issue is the conversion of farmland to other uses, especially in water-scarce regions. This drives up prices and makes it harder for new and aspiring farmers to get into the industry. However, NYFC points out that these concerns are not limited to foreign ownership—large corporations and pension funds are just as aggressively purchasing farmland. The solution may lie in improving the transparency of both local and state-level information, as well as focusing on policies that support new farmers.