Farmland owned by foreign interests on the rise
Un informe reciente del Centro de Periodismo de Investigación del Medio Oeste reveló que la propiedad extranjera de tierras agrícolas estadounidenses se duplicó entre 2004 y 2014. Los inversores extranjeros controlan ahora 27.3 millones de acres de tierras agrícolas.
Among the leading foreign owners of domestic farmland is the Chinese firm Shuanghui. The same firm purchased pork giant Smithfield Foods in 2013. Shuanghui owns more than 146,000 acres of farmland in the U.S.
The Center for Rural Affairs has long fought corporate control of our farmland and food production. Nebraska's Initiative 300 barred corporate ownership of farmland in the state. The 1982 ballot amendment won the support of Nebraskans concerned about maintaining control over the basic assets of their communities. The law was struck down after three decades in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ownership by foreign corporations simply heightens the concern that led to corporate farming bans across nine largely agriculture states in the Midwest and Plains. As a first step toward addressing this issue, the Center supports proposals to strengthen reporting on foreign ownership of farmland and to strengthen enforcement of existing state laws governing such sales.
Merger-mania moves ahead
A major wave of consolidation in the seed and chemical industry that kicked off in 2016 continues to move forward through market and regulatory hoops. Mergers underway include the proposed unions of Bayer and Monsanto; Dow and Dupont; and ChemChina and Syngenta. The deals are reshaping an already highly consolidated market.
A medida que las grandes corporaciones transnacionales aumentan su poder en el mercado, los agricultores independientes se quedan con menos opciones y sufren una menor competencia entre los proveedores de insumos. Han perdido el acceso a variedades de semillas y características genéticas, mientras que los precios que pagan por las características biotecnológicas se disparan.
The Center believes in the power of a competitive marketplace and the role of government in guarding against unfair and anticompetitive market practices. We continue to call on the Justice Department and on Congress to take action to block these mergers. Sadly, there appears to be little appetite to do so among D.C. policymakers.
