Posted on 05/31/2019 9:24:18 AM PDT by Maudeen
I’m certainly no expert but it seems to me if foreign ownership of American land turns into a problem our government can simply reclaim the land in the public interest and pay the previous foreign owners a fair price. Or the government can simply tell the foreign owners to sell the land to an American buyer with the understanding it will be taken from them if they refuse.
Correct but now they control it and can elect to produce no crops and just collect farm subsidies. More $$$ moving abroad.
Yeah, and where would they put it when they got it home?
Sure, they can’t take it with them but they can poison it or the crops if they wanted.
In a pinch, it can be seized from them if there is a problem.
The British Crown owns many thousands of acres of US farmland, and has, for well over 100 years.
Yep. Or, pace Iran, just frozen.
I was in the agriculture business for nearly 40 years. I saw lots of money come into American agriculture and I also saw a lot of money disappear as well. Unless the farms are run by people who have a vested interest in the land, the entities that do not do leave the business and someone else buys it up pennies on the dollar.
Capitalism. People can buy things. Foreign entities have been buying chunks of America for decades. And then selling them, often at a loss (given how big America is our real estate just isn’t worth what it is in most other countries, scarcity and all). Not a big deal.
Once Trump is gone all bets are off. If the US continues it’s rate of swirl in the crapper (discounting the the Trump era) those acres will eventually be nationalized.
Exactly....they don’t own the land anymore than we do!!!!
Meh. 30 million out of 2.3 billion.
But the Dutch owned more of America than Japan ever did. Japanese takeover scares took all heat off of the Dutch.
Subsidies without crops don’t even pay bills. Since the overwhelming majority of foreign-owned land is forest for lumber, there are no subsidies available.
You’re probably right. Just because a furner buys property here doesn’t mean the US loses sovereignty. That only occurs with embassies which are considered sovereign areas.
My beloved family farm is now owned by China. No one in the family would or could handle the high cost, hard work and tiny profit margin.
I get a little skeptical when I read a headline that is designed to be sensational, something designed to ‘push’ fear, rage or CIRCULATION/VIEWERSHIP.
To put this number in perspective, 30 million acres is 1.3% of the US (2.3 billion acres) or 3.2% of farmland (915 acres).
I would suspect that this number has not changed too significantly over the years. As long as the landowners are paying taxes and abiding by the law, what is the issue? I would guess that much of this land is held by multinational agribusinesses, seeking more moderate climates to grow crops. (Have you ever tasted a ‘grown in Canada’ orange? Nope? Me either!)
To me, the BIG concern (all over the world), is the destruction of family farms as they are eaten up by huge multinationals. THAT is the real ISSUE!
Deep in the original data is the fact that forests for lumber are included in ‘farmland’. And note that many ag states like Iowa and Minnesota severely restrict foreign ownership of land.
“.....doesn’t mean the US loses sovereignty. That only occurs with embassies which are considered sovereign areas.”
Not necessarily. We may Grant an embassy sovereignty as a courtesy but what would happen if we discovered there was a nuke being held on the grounds? Or suppose it was discovered a plot was about to get underway to cyber attack our infrastructure and financial institutions?
A Nation has sovereignty at the pleasure of the host country in which it is a guest.
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