Part of the issue, which you rightly mentioned, is the massive rise of industrial agriculture and the dramatic loss of family farms.
People are still eating chicken and drinking milk and wearing cotton, but the likelihood that that those resources came from generational farms owned and operated by families is far less than it was even 25 years ago.
The farm adjoining ours comes up for sale because its ownership was inherited by nieces and nephews long moved away. Our family nor the others adjoining cannot buy it “cash only” but an international poultry suppliers can (or pay a huge amount to lease/build barns on it). Or maybe someone will buy it as “an investment” to hunt on or one day retire to. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not, but the farming is gone and often resentment moves in among neighbors.
The country life is wonderful in many ways, but costs are (as with so many aspects of modern life) high not just in financial terms but relational losses.
I agree it is cultural. The problem is the amount of work living rural—particularly on a large piece of land requires. Until the culture remembers and celebrates that work is a virtue—good for the spirit, sadly people will continue to live like subjects in metropolitan regions where they have access to “services” and “culture”.
For those of us who have made a different choice, we must highlight how much better one’s life is with wide open spaces, the small-town feel of rural communities, and with endless tasks that a small piece of land or farm requires. Leaving a high-cost locale in California for rural North Country was the best thing I ever did for my soul.
My situation is ideal. I live in a rural village with most anything I need in a half hour drive, but if I get the itch for big city things (I do not) Boston is 90 minutes away.
Sadly , the young people are part of the problem. They don’t want to put in the work for a rural property and are only marking time until they can retire, thinking the government will take care of them at 65. True rural folks know that they can’t just walk away at a certain age and are more likely to treat a rural purchase as a lifetime investment. The days of “moving to town” and letting the young folks carry on, is over.
I do not like to make it a generational thing, because there are some young people who really get it, and even plenty of older folks who do not. But it will need to be younger people who carry on rural traditions because no one else will be around.
The primary issue has been the 20tril+ the Fed has "printed" above board since 2008. You and I don't have access to that, but big institutional investors do.
We are also competing against international money as from the Chinese, and a mass horde of illegal migrants liberals have been housing for free.
I do not think inflation caused by expanding the money supply is the primary issue as the price increases I cite are inflation adjusted. But competing with institutional investors and big industrial operators who are price insensitive is part of the problem. We need to get more land in to the hands of people who want to steward it not those who want to make a quick buck.
When they are buying an acre of corn/soybean land around for $8000-15,000, we aren’t really even talking about real inflation, but some alternative universe of financing that would turn us all into renters.
I agree, something like a new Homestead Act would be necessary, but that is a lot harder, taking land from globohomo, than American Indians 175 years ago.
A very important and timely topic to discuss, thank you for this article! In addition to the issues mentioned here, Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America does a great job of showing how US agriculture policies in the 1970s, which deliberately sought to "free" people from producing their own food, and defined success by a measure of efficiency that excluded other measures of success such sustainibility, and promoted "get big or get out". All of which led to dramatic reductions in family farms.
It's tough, especially when city people want to LARP as farmers and buy up a bunch of land they've no ability or real intent to work. I'd like to own instead of rent but I already have my work and it isn't farming (though I'm only a generation removed). But there is plenty of rural land not useful for farming but good for having some space of your own. Maybe less in the plains states, but still enough. The trouble I think is the market logic that "if this property sold, the one next to it will sell for more." You can't help but drive up the land value simply by buying it. Then there's the whole other thing about lower taxes on agricultural land, which looks like a great "financial hack."
The cash only deals...for the seller, satisfying but alas that also comes at a price for the locals as it could be like Black Rock crap. Or those solar people trying to by up older farmer land to destroy it in Upstate NY.
Part of the issue, which you rightly mentioned, is the massive rise of industrial agriculture and the dramatic loss of family farms.
People are still eating chicken and drinking milk and wearing cotton, but the likelihood that that those resources came from generational farms owned and operated by families is far less than it was even 25 years ago.
The farm adjoining ours comes up for sale because its ownership was inherited by nieces and nephews long moved away. Our family nor the others adjoining cannot buy it “cash only” but an international poultry suppliers can (or pay a huge amount to lease/build barns on it). Or maybe someone will buy it as “an investment” to hunt on or one day retire to. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not, but the farming is gone and often resentment moves in among neighbors.
The country life is wonderful in many ways, but costs are (as with so many aspects of modern life) high not just in financial terms but relational losses.
All of the regulation favors the big industrial operators, as small family farms cannot meet the burdens and stay profitable.
Yes, and the price of “smart equipment” and lack of access/ease/cost of maintenance
I agree it is cultural. The problem is the amount of work living rural—particularly on a large piece of land requires. Until the culture remembers and celebrates that work is a virtue—good for the spirit, sadly people will continue to live like subjects in metropolitan regions where they have access to “services” and “culture”.
For those of us who have made a different choice, we must highlight how much better one’s life is with wide open spaces, the small-town feel of rural communities, and with endless tasks that a small piece of land or farm requires. Leaving a high-cost locale in California for rural North Country was the best thing I ever did for my soul.
My situation is ideal. I live in a rural village with most anything I need in a half hour drive, but if I get the itch for big city things (I do not) Boston is 90 minutes away.
Many places like this too!
Sadly , the young people are part of the problem. They don’t want to put in the work for a rural property and are only marking time until they can retire, thinking the government will take care of them at 65. True rural folks know that they can’t just walk away at a certain age and are more likely to treat a rural purchase as a lifetime investment. The days of “moving to town” and letting the young folks carry on, is over.
I do not like to make it a generational thing, because there are some young people who really get it, and even plenty of older folks who do not. But it will need to be younger people who carry on rural traditions because no one else will be around.
Didn't this happen in Imperial Rome?
Did it? I rarely think about the Roman empire.
It is a major problem in rural MN too.
The primary issue has been the 20tril+ the Fed has "printed" above board since 2008. You and I don't have access to that, but big institutional investors do.
We are also competing against international money as from the Chinese, and a mass horde of illegal migrants liberals have been housing for free.
I do not think inflation caused by expanding the money supply is the primary issue as the price increases I cite are inflation adjusted. But competing with institutional investors and big industrial operators who are price insensitive is part of the problem. We need to get more land in to the hands of people who want to steward it not those who want to make a quick buck.
When they are buying an acre of corn/soybean land around for $8000-15,000, we aren’t really even talking about real inflation, but some alternative universe of financing that would turn us all into renters.
I agree, something like a new Homestead Act would be necessary, but that is a lot harder, taking land from globohomo, than American Indians 175 years ago.
A very important and timely topic to discuss, thank you for this article! In addition to the issues mentioned here, Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America does a great job of showing how US agriculture policies in the 1970s, which deliberately sought to "free" people from producing their own food, and defined success by a measure of efficiency that excluded other measures of success such sustainibility, and promoted "get big or get out". All of which led to dramatic reductions in family farms.
I have finally posted my first Substack article, I hope you’ll take a look and enjoy it. LyndaLeeD
It's tough, especially when city people want to LARP as farmers and buy up a bunch of land they've no ability or real intent to work. I'd like to own instead of rent but I already have my work and it isn't farming (though I'm only a generation removed). But there is plenty of rural land not useful for farming but good for having some space of your own. Maybe less in the plains states, but still enough. The trouble I think is the market logic that "if this property sold, the one next to it will sell for more." You can't help but drive up the land value simply by buying it. Then there's the whole other thing about lower taxes on agricultural land, which looks like a great "financial hack."
The cash only deals...for the seller, satisfying but alas that also comes at a price for the locals as it could be like Black Rock crap. Or those solar people trying to by up older farmer land to destroy it in Upstate NY.