Free Republic

Land Prices Are Rising Uniformly Across The CornbeltRobert WenzelMonday, February 20, 2012 Farmland values in the Cornbelt are rising as fast as anytime in the past 35 years, but may be showing some indication of deceleration. Bankers throughout the five-state region in the Chicago Federal Reserve District report a 22% increase in the value of good farmland over the course of 2011. But in the seven-state Kansas City Fed District, the value of farmland rose 25% in the past year, reports FarmGateBlog Higher prices for grain have spurred the most significant demand for land since the 1970’s. Farm land, oil,...

In the 18th century, Catherine the Great invited German farmers to come to Russia and cultivate the land. Over two centuries later, the country is recruiting Teutonic pioneers once again to put vast tracts of fallow land to use. The land holds great opportunities for agricultural entrepreneurs -- provided they have strong nerves. Stefan Dürr, 47, is now the owner of more than 170,000 hectares (about 420,000 acres) of prime Russian farmland. He is cultivating fields in the Kursk, Voronezh, Orenburg, Novosibirsk and Kaluga regions. Through his holding company, EkoSem-Agrar, he employs 2,800 people in farming, owns a herd of...

Remember when the Army Engineers blew the Birds Point levee in early May? Now we know the real reason. ~Ed. By Ann Barnhardt Cattle commodities broker June 24, 2011 (See her June 26 Update below) Two HUGE intel leads in my email box this morning from way-back contacts that I’ve had for years, that are actually somewhat connected concepts. 1. File this one under “Now It All Makes Sense.” A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers...

Double Red Alert Posted by Ann Barnhardt - June 24, AD 2011 9:01 AM MST Two HUGE intel leads in my email box this morning from way-back contacts that I've had for years, that are actually somewhat connected concepts. 1. File this one under "Now It All Makes Sense". A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY...

With drought threatening food production in the EU, US and China, analysts at Renaissance Capital believe the next 8-10 weeks will be crucial to prices in 2011 and 2012. “The food price threat for 2011-2012 is very significant, but may disappear in August. It depends entirely on the weather over May to July,” said Renaissance Capital’s Charles Robertson. “If we do not get the right mix of rain and sun in the coming 8-10 weeks, then later this year we will see record price levels for the most important cereal in the world today – corn,” he said. If this...

The Mississippi River has topped a levee north of Lake Providence in extreme northeast Louisiana, flooding croplands as an effort by farmers to shore up the 100-year-old structure was thwarted by the rising river. About 12,000 acres behind the 18-mile-long levee, mostly planted in corn and soybeans, were flooding Thursday morning though no homes appeared to be in danger in the thinly populated area. Maintenance on the levee was abandoned years ago after another, higher levee was built farther back off the river.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- A group of 25 southeast Missouri farmers is suing the federal government over its decision to blow a hole in a levee, causing their farmland and houses to flood. Cape Girardeau attorney J. Michael Ponder filed the lawsuit Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers detonated explosives on the Birds Point levee to ease pressure from the swelling Mississippi River. The Southeast Missourian reports that the lawsuit claims that the government violated the farmers' rights by taking their land without adequate compensation. The lawsuit seeks class-action status. Ponder, who is from...

Tiny downstate Cairo, already battling the still-rising Ohio and Mississippi rivers, has been drawn into a controversial flood-relief plan that could put thousands of acres of farmland in neighboring Missouri under water. The plan calls for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to burst a Mississippi River levee to provide relief to little Cairo, population 2,800, as well as relief for a series of pumping stations, flood walls and levees. But the relief action will trigger flooding in southeastern Missouri, as opening the levee will allow water to flow over some 130,000 acres of Missouri land, mostly farms. The state...

It may seem a radical investment made by those who believe the end times are coming, but with food prices soaring, farmland could be on the brink of a serious bull market. It's not just investors like Jim Rogers in the market, but countries too seeking to secure their food future. Of course farmland investment comes with its own challenges. It requires a long-term commitment. Weather is volatile, and could slam your investment in the short-term. But if you have the patience, and the money, farm land could be of huge use to you. #1 Food demand is rising Detail:...

Famed Hedge Funder Michael Burry Is Buying Farmland, And Sees More Pain For The Dollar And Housing Joe Weisenthal Sep. 7, 2010, 7:59 AM Michael Burry, the famed hedge fund manager featured prominently in The Big Short, is betting big on farmland, and expects the collapse of the dollar, he tells Bloomberg. Apparently he's still poking around for his next "big" idea (Burry famously shorted the housing market through the same type of bets that made John Paulson mega-rich), though he thinks having farmland with a good water supply is very attractive. In a segment of the interview here, he...

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The search by the booming North American population of Amish for affordable, fertile farmland has produced settlements in 28 states and Ontario — and has even led parties to scout recently for suitable properties in Alaska and Mexico. A new study estimates the number of Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years alone, to a total population of 249,000, compared with about 227,000 in 2008. That figure was just 124,000 in 1992. Nearly all Amish descended from a group of about 5,000 in the early 20th century.

Has anyone seen the documentary "Mugabe and the White African?" I watched it last night after downloading it and it's brilliant. What do you think of it, if you've seen it?

Politics: The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform. One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior announced it was increasing...

The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash. The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers. Dr Faber, who advised his audience to pull out of American stocks one week before the 1987 crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis, vies with the Nouriel Roubini, the economist, as a rival claimant...

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.

Delta smelts: Preferred over humans. Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the...

HR 2749 is being rushed through Congress, and the house may look to suspend the rules and fast track the bill at Obama’s request. Just what can we expect from this legislation? A lot more of the following: Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind. “I was...

Outsourcing's third wave May 21st 2009 From The Economist print edition Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries' farmland. Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism? Click to enlargeEARLY this year, the king of Saudi Arabia held a ceremony to receive a batch of rice, part of the first crop to be produced under something called the King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad. It had been grown in Ethiopia, where a group of Saudi investors is spending $100m to raise wheat, barley and rice on land leased to them by the government. The investors are...

WALKERSVILLE, Md. (AP) - Officials of a rural Maryland town illegally discriminated against a Muslim group by barring them from building a mosque and holding annual conventions on land zoned for farming, the property's owner claims in a federal lawsuit. Developer David Moxley and his father had planned to sell 224 acres in Walkersville to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA for about $6 million. The Silver Spring-based religious group canceled the deal earlier this year after the town's three-member Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to reject their request for a special exception to land-use restrictions. (snip) David and Robert...

YOU'VE LIVED THROUGH THE TECH-STOCK BUBBLE. The dot-com bubble. The residential-real-estate bubble. Now, get ready for the cropland bubble. - At year-end 2007, farms -- the latest count shows that the U.S. has 2,089,790 -- are what Miami condos and San Diego McMansions were at year-end 2004: properties so hot that they're likely to have a meltdown in their future. As city slickers in many parts of the nation see the market prices of their homesteads deflate faster than a New Year's party balloon, farmers are watching the values of their land swell by annual double-digit percentages. Nationwide, farmland prices...

For the first time, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has adopted a policy in favor of high-density housing developments in rural areas to preserve farmland.But the state's largest organization of farmers, with 43,000 member families, also recommended that the current power of cities and villages to impose their zoning regulations three miles outside their borders be severely cut back. The policies, which set the farm bureau's legislative priorities for next year, were approved by 250 delegates representing members of the 61 county chapters around the state. Paul Zimmerman, executive director of public affairs for the farm bureau, said preservation of...

North Korea says floods devastate agriculture, destroy 11 percent of nation's farmland Wednesday, August 15, 2007 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) Floods caused by rains have destroyed more than one-tenth of North Korea's farmland at the height of the impoverished country's growing season, official media reported Wednesday. "It is hard to expect a high-grain output owing to the uninterrupted rainstorms at the most important time for the growth of crops in the country," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said. The damage has submerged, buried or washed away more than 11 percent of rice and corn fields in the country,...

The continuing political parlor game of "What price tolls?" took an interesting turn Nov. 7. The Big Toller himself — Gov. Rick Perry — seemed to suffer little damage from what was a sustained battering on the issue, losing only three of the dozens of counties in the paths of the two proposed Trans-Texas Corridor routes. But voters in Texas House District 52 alongside the new Texas 45 North tollway put something of a scare into state Rep. Mike Krusee. The Williamson County Republican is the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, stage-managed the birth of the controversial Phase 2...

Roadway may lead to loss of open space, runoff With the election season past, proponents of the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal weathered their reelection campaigns well, including the corridors original proponent, Gov. Rick Perry. The largest proposed public works project in Texas history, the corridor will be a series of toll roads, railways and utility lines extending across the state. Many state officials tout the project as the only answer to alleviate trade and traffic concerns resulting from population growth while various citizen groups have criticized the Perry administration and Spanish-based contractor, Cintra-Zachary, for their vague plans for the corridor....

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. - In a town that is one of the key battlegrounds in the Interstate 69 fight, environmental groups Monday announced a federal lawsuit to block design and planning of the Evansville-to-Indianapolis leg of the highway. The plaintiffs, including the Hoosier Environmental Council and several business owners, allege that the Indiana Department of Transportation ignored harmful environmental impacts of building a direct route between Evansville and Indianapolis. It also claims INDOT was biased against a route that would have upgraded the existing U.S. 41-Interstate 70 corridor into a new highway. It accuses 11 defendants - state and federal agencies...

Pat Hensen spent a good part of his 35-year career with the Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resource Conservation Service) helping Texas Blacklands farmers improve their land. And he’s invested considerable time, effort and money the last 20 years doing the same on his own or leased acreage. And it may all end up under yards of concrete and asphalt if the Trans Texas Corridor passes muster and follows the latest proposed route. “My farm would be in the middle of it,” Hensen says from his Bell County living room where he and wife Loretta participate in a grassroots campaign...

Rural Texas on edge as state prepares to reveal general route of TTC-35 MALONE — On this particular morning, fog has Texas 171 socked in for the whole 15 miles east from Hillsboro to this tiny German farm town. While you can tell that the winter-bare black loam is mostly flat moving toward the invisible horizon, you can only guess what might lie beyond. Barger Geltmeier and Benny Mynar and their fellow Hill County farmers have a pretty good idea, however, what might be forming out in the fog near Austin and heading their way, and they don't much like...

U.S. Army Sgt. Steven Gonzales, a combat engineer assigned to E Company, 1-68 Combined Arms Battalion, unearths a 155mm round buried in a field in south Muqdadiyah, Iraq, during Operation Dirty Harry, Feb. 20, 2006. U.S Army photo by Staff Sgt. Mark Wojciechowski More Photos Operation Dirty Harry Joint Search of Farmland Yields Mortar Round By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mark Wojciechowski 133rd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment MUQDADIYAH, Iraq, Feb. 27, 2006 — As part of continuous efforts to thwart anti-Iraqi forces and find hidden weapons caches, Operation “Dirty Harry” recently searched a neighborhood and farmlands in south Muqdadiya...

U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. David Diceglie, 42nd Infantry Division Artillery, holds some captured enemy ammunition at a cache site. Diceglie was one of a team of U.S. soldiers assigned to Task Force Liberty who supervised the destruction of caches like this one. Photo courtesy of 42nd Infantry Division Artillery Ordnance Disposal Reclaims Farmland, Saves Lives Unexploded ordnance in Iraq includes a wide assortment of artillery, rocket and mortar rounds and in some cases, anti-ship cruise missiles. By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Raymond Drumsta 42nd Infantry Division Public Affairs FORWARD OPERATING BASE SUMMERALL, BAYJI, Iraq, Oct. 27, 2005 — In...

"Smart Growth" is here, a collection of proposals, guidelines, and goals that will ultimately make homebuying less feasible and commuting more difficult. And that's the good news. The essential idea behind various "Smart Growth" initiatives is to move zoning decisions from local communities to Washington. This is necessary, it's alleged, because we have too much traffic congestion, metro areas are getting too big, and we're losing too much farmland. To solve such problems, we must allow the federal government to spend $10.5 billion for programs and strategic planning. The "Smart Growth" concept is a wondrously curious idea precisely because it...

TRENTON, N.J. -- A Democratic fund-raiser linked to Gov. James E. McGreevey extorted $40,000 in campaign donations by promising a farmer that public officials would help him get more money for development rights to his land, federal authorities said Tuesday. David D'Amiano is charged with extortion, mail fraud and bribery. According to an indictment released Tuesday, D'Amiano told the owner of a Piscataway farm he would not get premium value for his property unless he made donations to the Democratic Party. Middlesex County officials had offered Mark Halper $3 million for development rights to his 74-acre family farm. After D'Amiano...

An 89-year-old woman could be evicted from her home of more than 50 years for missing one tax payment of $572 on her South Hanover Twp. property. Helene Shue's red farmhouse and 41 acres of land along Route 39 -- about two miles from Hersheypark -- were appraised at $800,000, said her nephew, Jeff Arndt. The property was sold in September at a sheriff's sale for $15,000. Arndt said he and his aunt were not aware that the county was seeking to recoup a portion of the 2001 taxes until an anonymous caller tipped him off Monday night. "He told...