I own the farm and farm it in Illinois. I owe the land through an LLC, because farming is dangerous and I don't want to go bankrupt if somebody sues me. Farms are expensive and hard to subdivide, so people will put them into a legal entity and pass down to the next generation via a trust. All of my neighbors are doing the same, so we're all counted as "not farmers" here
Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit -- not even better than holding t-bills. The margins get better as you get bigger but still not great.
Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol. Everybody in your area will instantly know you're a big wig if you're one of the X family who has 2,000 acres all without the ick that comes with running other businesses. You can't buy that kind of status in my community with anything other than land.
mbreese · 29m ago
It's buried in a figure legend, but the Tribune does acknowledge this too:
> Note: The 12 selected counties had some of the highest cash rents in the state. For the purposes of this analysis, a business entity was defined as an organization with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co, Corp, LP or LLP tag. This land is not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses.
Edit: apparently not that buried...
spyspy · 26m ago
It's not buried anywhere, it's literally the next paragraph after the lede.
> These acres are not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses because they offer tax benefits and externalize losses.
mbreese · 23m ago
So it is... Chalk that up to my science reading skills -- I skimmed the text and skipped quickly to the charts, figures, and legends...
ASalazarMX · 7m ago
This is a use case where I think a current LLM shines. Ask it to summarize the important points of n papers, and slow read only the ones that pique your interest. It won't be perfect, but it will save you a ton of time while letting you focus on the things that need more attention.
libraryofbabel · 22m ago
> Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit -- not even better than holding t-bills.
Non-judgmental curious question: why do you keep doing it? (As opposed to selling the land and buying tbills.)
appreciatorBus · 16m ago
> the ick that comes with running other businesses
Also non-judgmental curious question: what is this "ick" related to non-farming businesses?
jckahn · 8m ago
I imagine there's some satisfaction in feeding people that money can't buy.
TimorousBestie · 19s ago
There’s an exceedingly strong cultural drive to keep farmland “in the family” even if it impoverishes or otherwise inconveniences the descendants.
I had a coworker once who lived in this region and owned some amount of farmland in a similar situation. He could have sold it and moved his family to <insert modest paradise here, in his case Florida> at any point; even now I think it would be easily done, if not as easy as in the past. But of course he still lives there, immiserating himself to keep the farm barely viable and working a second job to provide a livable salary.
Why? Because selling it would offend his dead father’s pride.
dlcarrier · 1h ago
Most farms are not owned by farmers, most housing is not owned by tenants, most airplanes are not owned by airlines, etc., etc..
Vertical integration can have benefits, but it isn't necessary and has drawbacks. Even when vertically integrated, regulations are often written under the assumption that everything is leased, not owned, so compliance is easier if you own a company that owns an asset, instead of owning that asset directly.
For example, if two people carpool in a car that one of them owns, instead of hiring a taxi, they'll usually split the costs of the fuel and the wear on the car. On the other hand, if they were flying in a small airplane owned by one of them, it's illegal to split the costs of wear on the airplane, unless its a rental or air taxi. Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.
CGMthrowaway · 32m ago
>Most farms are not owned by farmers, most housing is not owned by tenants, most airplanes are not owned by airlines, etc., etc..
Sounds nice but it's not true in the US. A majority (60%) of US land in farms is owner-operated.[1] US homeownership is 65% meaning most housing units are owner-occupied.[2] And 60% of North American airplanes are owner-operated not leased.[3]
Not trying to nitpick, but I guess I am. Does "most" really mean 65%? I tend to think most needs to clear a pretty high hurdle. I bring this up not to attack you, but I've noticed this behavior in journalism or when folks are trying to win arguments where instead of quoting the actual number they'll use a term like most, which I don't think has a hard and fast threshold.
I guess, for me, most would have to be something north of 80% because it just doesn't feel right to use it below that. 65% would be majority, obviously, maybe significant majority or some such.
Anyone else feel this way?
quesera · 14m ago
I do not. For me, "most" is 50% + 1.
harmmonica · 9m ago
This is interesting. So you're saying that majority and most have the same meaning?
quesera · 3m ago
Yes, I think so:
Most people who voted for President in 2020, voted for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
The majority of people who voted for President in 2020, voted for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
leptons · 14m ago
Too bad there aren't books that describe the meaning of words, so this website will have to do...
No, "most" does not mean "80%" or any other made up number.
harmmonica · 10m ago
Not the friendliest way to reply, but are you saying 65% does not mean most? Just wondering if we're violently agreeing. I shouldn't have said 80%. Was just trying to articulate that most is a high threshold and also not defined as an absolute number.
arbor_day · 29m ago
Have you seen how expensive a tractor or combine is? The economies of scale are real in farming.
You need ~$1M worth of equipment to farm 80 acres (~$1M worth of land), but that same equipment can basically farm 800 acres (~10M worth of land). An equipment issue can destroy a years worth of work with 800 acres (e.g. frost damage from delays), but with 8000 acres you can have spares / avoid the loss with some overtime.
Fertilizer and pesticides aren't neatly contained. If you farm different crops than your neighbors, overspray can kill your yield (e.g. weeds spray for corn kills soybeans). Laws around who can grow/spray what and being big helps make that better
9rx · 2m ago
> You need ~$1M worth of equipment to farm 80 acres
All new? That seems way too low. You'd struggle to get into a combine alone.
Used? That seems way too high. I doubt I'd get any more than $300k for my equipment (and that's more than I paid) if I were to sell it today, and it's pretty nice equipment compared to what I see a lot of farmers using.
> 80 acres (~$1M worth of land)
We always wonder why so cheap? The 18 acres for sale down the road from me wants just about $1M (I don't see that one selling, to be fair). The 130 acres further down the road wants nearly $4M (quite realistic). If you could pick up 80 acres in these parts for $1M, you just won the lottery. And, to be clear, it's not like on the edge of a city or something where other interests are driving up the price. It's just farmland. The yields are respectable, but not quite like Illinois will produce.
> with 8000 acres you can have spares
I've got spares in that $300k. Ironically, my oldest and most worn out tractor is always the one that ends up saving the day.
jancsika · 7m ago
> On the other hand, if they were flying in a small airplane owned by one of them, it's illegal to split the costs of wear on the airplane, unless its a rental or air taxi.
That AC and the regulations cited in it couldn't be clearer-- if you and the pilot are both going to $destination for $reasons, you and the pilot can definitely split the cost of the fuel.
Moreover, this is perfectly analogous to the carpooling example as you stated it-- two people both having a stated purpose traveling to a destination, both sharing the cost of gas/wear.
There of course could be ways to carpool where the passengers pay the total cost of the driver's gas/wear/etc. You can't do that in your airplane. But again, I think the reasons for this are glaringly obvious-- keep silicon valley from attempting to create an unregulated taxi service in the sky. (In fact, IIRC there was someone who tried over a decade ago-- perhaps these laws are a response to that?)
> Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.
I mean, the pilots I know who do that are either a) multiple people owning a single plane, or b) single owner literally running a rental taxi service. Who isn't covered by those two categories?
GLdRH · 59m ago
If you carpool for money, you're a taxi.
And if you take a friend on your plane, and he gives you x€ afterwards for gas money, how is that illegal?
I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
isaacdl · 55m ago
It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc.
Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
hoistbypetard · 46m ago
> Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.
isaacdl · 41m ago
It's a safety measure. When it comes to regulating aviation, in general, the FAA is concerned with protecting the public. The "public" doesn't generally have the knowledge to evaluate a pilot, aircraft, or the operation of an aviation venture. So, the FAA puts rules around these things. The private pilot is held to a much lower standard of skill than a commercial or airline pilot. But, that means that the FAA doesn't trust them to fly around the general public.
You can take your friend for a spin in your plane if you want, or go screw around and kill yourself, but you cannot "hold out" your operation as an air taxi or airline to the general public, and you can't make money off of it in any situation.
A commercial pilot has to undergo much more training in operating an aircraft safely. This means the FAA allows them to get paid to be a pilot - they could be hired to fly someone around in that person's plane. But the commercial license does not really train them in running a safe airline, so the FAA does not allow them to use their own plane to run an airline.
EDIT: To word it differently, the opportunity to get paid increases the likelihood that someone will push limits or take unsafe risks. If you aren't under pressure to make your paycheck, you're less likely to take your passengers into marginal weather. (One of the most dangerous occupations in aviation is medivac/aviation EMS. There, the pressure isn't generally monetary but moral: you want to help a sick patient, so you take more risks.)
mandevil · 31m ago
I'm not totally sure what the GP meant, but I think it has to do with the owning/operating organization of the plane not being a qualified (Part 121/135) company for commercial operations.
A grandfather-in-law owned his own small business (a civil engineering firm), and had a plane that he flew to get to meetings/job sites across the Midwest. He could fly company employees just fine- and the company could reimburse him for the flight expense, and since it was not for the public that was fine. He could fly his family or friends on his own dime just fine. But if a family member or friend not working for the company tried to compensate him for the costs, then it is a question of "is his company actually an unlicensed airline?" and now we're getting into territory where it gets complicated. The FAA heavily regulates airlines, which is a major reason they are so safe. But there has to be a lower bound on what gets regulated, and avoiding that is what I think that GP is referencing.
ryandrake · 34m ago
There are strict rules, but in general small plane owners who are private, non-commercial pilots may still share operating costs with someone they bring along with them. 61.113(c) permits pilots to share operating expenses of a flight with passengers provided the pilot pays at least his or her pro rata share of the operating expenses of the flight. Operating expenses are limited to fuel, oil, airport expenditures and rental fees.
AnimalMuppet · 6m ago
Most housing is not owned by tenants? That surprises me quite a bit. Would you supply a source for that?
aeternum · 50m ago
Yes, regulation often inadvertently creates both barriers to entry and economies of scale.
Government should focus on making it easier for new companies to compete as that is what generally yields better and/or less expensive products.
jackcosgrove · 59m ago
The headline is provocative, as some amount of corporate-owned farmland is owned by corporations that are in turn owned by farmers and their families.
I would also push back on the notion that owner-operators are in a better position. It's more accurate to say that farmers who have assets of any kind are better off than those who don't have assets. As an example, generations back in my family we owned a lot of farmland. There were some bad investments made in the farming operation and we almost lost it all. This was in the early 1980s for those who are familiar.
If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification.
When people lionize farming owner-operators, they discount the risk that owner is taking by having so many assets concentrated in one operation. Now farmers do know about investing and diversification, and some do make the rational decision to cash out. Many also don't, for various reasons.
But it's not totally fair to expect farmers to behave differently than other asset owners because farming is seen romantically or in terms of national security.
This is a different argument than one which would decry the position of tenant farmers. Obviously being a tenant farmer owning nothing but equipment is harder than being a farmer who has $5 million invested somewhere else and rents the land he farms.
stockresearcher · 12m ago
> If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification.
Fun fact: the guy who lead the team at Wells Fargo doing the research that was given to Bogle and used to start Vanguard grew up on a farm in Sandwich, IL.
He always said that growing corn was a numbers game; looking at numbers was his whole life.
xnx · 1h ago
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
darth_avocado · 52m ago
It’s because it’s still mom and pop because 72% of farms are still fully owned by people but they tend to be smaller in size and only account for 30% of the total farm land. And majority of farms are still under a 1000 acre size. The problem is that there are about 27000 farms that are hyper giants of 5000+ acres which are the consolidated operations that account for a huge portion of the US farmland.
Also, farming is mom and pop highly optimized operation. Those two don’t need to be separate things. Once you understand that running a farm can be hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions, you can understand the disconnect.
OkayPhysicist · 54m ago
There is a lot of national security benefit to propping up the domestic agricultural industry. We've probably overstepped that line, but just "leave it to the free market" is a really bad option, too.
Ericson2314 · 1h ago
Yes, cannot emphasize this enough. Farming is an industry, and we have take it seriously as one and stop romanticizing it.
Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
GLdRH · 55m ago
The workplace is becoming increasingly abstract. I wonder if there'll be a time when cubicles and spreadsheets become an object of nostalgia or romantization.
roughly · 49m ago
wait people used to have walls separating them from their neighbors? and, like, 40sq feet to themselves? what the fuck?
franktankbank · 41m ago
What's wrong with holding in esteem the things that truly underpin our security in this country?
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 35m ago
The special treatment of farmers is about food security. We generally trust farmers to keep delivering us food and we're willing to allow them a lot of special treatment because of that.
jghn · 50m ago
Unfortunately "the farmers" is simply a marketing gimmick along the lines of "the children". It is used to evoke a specific image and implied set of ideals. And because of that we have to deal with all kinds of crap legislation tied to it.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 33m ago
This is a very online opinion. "The farmers" feed us. Very hard for me to think that's a marketing gimmick.
jghn · 16m ago
At the population scale in the US "The farmers" as in the stereotype of the rugged, individual American by and large does not. That's part of the point of this article.
BigAg farms? You're absolutely right.
recipe19 · 42m ago
> an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
And yet, farmers are a vocal and critical political bloc in every other EU country, too.
Farming is just important. Not as much because it employs a large portion of the population, but because it keeps a large portion of the population alive. It is the original industry that's "too big to fail" - if you let it, you get famine.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 31m ago
Very well said. There is no alternative to having a successful farming industry.
droopyEyelids · 54m ago
The highly optimized manufacturing operation has made farming into a powerful tool of statecraft internationally. Other countries become dependent on our beans and corn to [indirectly] feed their people or for inputs for their own industries. That gives us diplomatic leverage.
Once you start thinking about that, a lot of the mystery or 'inefficiency' of farming in the USA makes more sense. For example, the subsidies to grow corn and soy but not kale and squash or whatever was in the article- growing kale and squash isn't a strategic priority.
quantummagic · 54m ago
The country wouldn't even exist without the electoral college. It was pivotal in uniting the states under a federal government, and is working as intended. Maybe the USA should be abandoned, and all ties between the states renegotiated, but you shouldn't be able to unilaterally change the terms of the deal.
TulliusCicero · 47m ago
It was necessary at the time yes, it's just drastically outlived its usefulness.
quantummagic · 39m ago
Useful to who? It's working exactly as intended. You shouldn't get to unilaterally change the terms of a contract. If both parties agree, then sure. But if not, you have to accept the good with the bad, it's a compromise. We've gotten a lot more out of the deal than it has ever cost.
It set up the critical vulnerability that we have today, that in states where the votes are close at the state level, switching just a handful of votes completely moves the votes in the electoral college. This will be a continuing temptation, and a weakness of the us system. The 200 or 300k votes in swing states that had Biden beating Trump and then Trump beating Harris this time is not a great thing in democracy.
So this vulnerability makes it a potential attraction to steal votes. There was the notorious recorded phone call when Trump called up the Secretary of State in Georgia and said he only needed 11,700 votes, please give them to him.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 32m ago
Nope. I find it incredibly useful.
mattgrice · 1h ago
If structured the right way, agricultural land has numerous tax benefits that can range based on jurisdiction from carve-outs on inheritance taxes all the way down to property tax exemptions on what could not even be considered a hobby farm (very large exurban lots)
petcat · 46m ago
This is such a contrast to upstate NY where farmland is still overwhelmingly owned by individuals and families. It was nearly 75% the last time I checked. And 70% is owner-operator (the owner is also the farmer). Only a very tiny percentage of active farmland is owned by an investment company.
pfdietz · 32m ago
A report on NY farms and farmland, covering the 2012-2022 period.
It's interesting how little of NY state is farmland (21.6%).
"When the extended family of the farmer is taken into consideration, 94.6 percent of New York farms are family-owned."
petcat · 20m ago
New York state has gone to great lengths over the last 40 years to highly incentivize (read: subsidize) local, family farmers and deter megacorp speculators and investors.
At this point I think it's basically impossible to actually lose money on a farm as long as it's family/individual owner-operator.
It's also why NY state cropland is among the most expensive in the country. Once you get it, the value will only ever go up regardless of crop yield in any given year.
SilverElfin · 29m ago
Is this different from factories not being owned by the assembly line workers? Not saying it is right or wrong but I wonder why farming is treated differently. Even for me, seeing this headline makes me feel bad for farming and the idyllic view I have of it.
legitster · 1h ago
> Eight states in the Corn Belt — Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin — restrict the size, structure and purpose of corporations that can own farmland to limit ownership by large investment funds.
> More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP tag. Sangamon and Edgar counties were included in this analysis because historical data was not needed.
The TL;DR is that Illinois is one of the few states where there aren't restrictions on farmland owners, and even there it's a small (if growing) problem.
I think this is one of those problems that should theoretically be self-limiting. The economics of a farming family owning their land is too strong - just from the amount of tax breaks and subsidies available. Put another way, the land in a farmer's hands is worth more than in a corporation's.
I think the real risk comes from large farm landholders who want to cash out of their farm but don't have an heir or successor lined up. Farmers are getting old and their kids more often than not don't want to run the family farm anymore and there simply aren't going to be any other buyers.
Alive-in-2025 · 56m ago
Selling the land that had been in the family for generations is what happened recently in my family. My dad (wealthy retired 80 year old engineer) unfortunately decided he wanted the money, instead of keeping it in the family. It has been in our family 150 years. None of us are farmers in the current family, but we had relatives who were still renting the land in the area. They couldn't afford to buy the land either. So no farmers in the family today doesn't make it obviously something that we can keep - still I was disappointed with the outcome.
We sold it to some outside group. Apparently the best way to sell land today is an online action. You announce it ahead of time, there is a minimal amount to start bidding, and then like an ad auction, there is a minimal increment to go up by, fixed time limit of like a week to bid.
I was really sad that it left the family. The sale price of the midwest farm land ended up about $10k an acre for cropland. The amount of money that renting brought in didn't seem like it would be enough for any young person to actually buy land at current prices. I am sure they'd have a lot of tax deductions but can they get a million dollar loan? I expect there will be houses put on the land eventually. I had an idea for how to keep it suitable for future farmland, which was to put solar power on it with a 20 year contract with a local power company (with everything removed after).
Alive-in-2025 · 37m ago
How does a farmer who doesn't inherit land ever afford the land?
onlypassingthru · 29m ago
The modern way. You make a fortune in technology or finance, then buy yourself a vineyard to become a mediocre vintner!
Right. Most of it is owned by the llc the farmer set up for thier land, and/or the family trust set up to prevent the land from being split into ever smaller parcels by inheritance.
perardi · 1h ago
Yeah, that’s how my farm land is set up.
I inherited farm land from my grandfather. I am very much not a farmer, I do not want to live in Southern Illinois, but I don’t want to give up the land, so I rent the land to a farmer with adjacent property.
I realize that’s not really the point of this article—this is more about huge firms buying up non-trivial amounts of land.
Jimmc414 · 53m ago
“the global network of capital essentially functions to separate the worker from the means of production.” - Bo Burnham
> Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land
Isn’t this the historical norm? Anyway, we don’t live in a communist utopia, so most people don’t own their workplace, farmers or not.
farceSpherule · 1h ago
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
os2warpman · 57m ago
Food isn't a ECON101 factory widget.
Farm subsidies are both the single most important national security policy a nation can have, and an incredibly inexpensive yet extremely effective insurance policy.
hibikir · 1h ago
Europe also does some very heavy subsidies. Without subsidies, a lot of farming just goes away due to the uncompetitiveness in labor vs the southern hemisphere. The Amazon would be replaced completely with farms for rich countries. It's not surprising that countries just don't want so much of the country basically depopulating.
Ericson2314 · 59m ago
Good points.
Need more legal immigration, and paying Brazil, etc. not to farm there. Better to do that than subsidize farmers.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 25m ago
Why is that better?
Ericson2314 · 19m ago
What are we trying to accomplish? I think:
- Use arable land where it exists, not just where the cheapest labor is
- Don't do deforestation or other such things
I would like policies that directly address this:
- Legal immigration fairly moves the people the arible land, rather than moving the farming to the cheap people. The goal would be in 200 years there is enough economic development and immigration that there is no longer global scale labor arbitrage.
- Paying to protect the land we directly care about directly protects that land, and removes the incentive to farm there after all. (If you farm there, you loose the preservation rent.)
Farmers in brazil are notoriously far-right-wing, just like else where, and so paying the gov to not farm has other return-to-center-and-sanity benefits too.
nsksl · 59m ago
What we don't want is our sustenance and survival depending on the warlord du jour in some shithole across the world.
nemomarx · 1h ago
If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly.
I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
frankus · 1h ago
The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
ebiester · 43m ago
But if we had a famine, we could redirect that toward generating food for that year or three.
No, I don't love biofuels either. but it's not entirely a bad idea.
nemomarx · 1h ago
Yeah, biofuels is more of a PR program. You could cut that one without any real harm, and you could definitely cut back on corn in general and promote some other stuff or move things around
danlitt · 1h ago
Subsidising food is quite different from subsidising farmers.
guyzero · 1h ago
Exactly. Farmers vote.
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 28m ago
Terrible idea. Food security is national security. I'm not in favor of leaving that up to chance.
ebiester · 45m ago
Avoiding starvation on a country level is a good goal of government, even if it isn't perfectly efficient. That can mean price floors and things that are not optimal for cars or toys.
throwaway894345 · 1h ago
Besides keeping food costs low, as other commenters mentioned, I certainly think it's desirable to keep our agriculture sector from devolving into a small number of large corporations. I trust small independent farmers a lot more than I trust large corporations to take care of the land and to produce healthy food (which isn't to say independent farmers are perfect by any means).
edwardbernays · 1h ago
Forget China. The greatest threat to American freedom and global power is robber baron billionaires. We live in a full-on kleptocracy. It's about time we add some new amendments to the constitution to relevel the balance of powers.
cozzyd · 1h ago
Fortunately the Illinois governor can be counted on to take a stand against billionaires.
edwardbernays · 1h ago
true, we wish this brave and powerful man the best of luck as he takes on his matched opponents: the people in his socioeconomic bracket. amen.
actionfromafar · 1h ago
You jest, but the harsh truth is that almost no change in society is possible unless at least some of the societal elites are on the bandwagon.
edwardbernays · 1h ago
It's both sardonic and genuine. If he's genuine, then I genuinely wish him the best luck. However, it is very hard for me to believe that any billionaire would ever do something generally disfavorable to the current billionaire class. It's even harder for me to believe that, if one of them was to do so, that it would not be for their own further gain, just to the detriment of their peer cohort. I'm a bit jaded from having been lied to too many times.
Again, however, if he is genuine: I genuinely wish him the best luck taking on his matched opponents.
actionfromafar · 1h ago
Agreed.
autoexec · 1h ago
I have to admit that for as corrupt as Illinois is, Pritzker has managed to support a few things which his billionaire buddies weren't too fond of. It's not all good, but it's better than I expected. He's called for higher taxes on the rich, stronger labor protections, higher minimum wages and better support for the poors.
cozzyd · 52m ago
Yeah I actually like JB, even though I'm somewhat uncomfortable with him being a billionaire.
snarf21 · 1h ago
The problem is that they have bought all three systems of government so they can do whatever they want. They own all the media as well. Even something like PBS that is supposed to be more independent is highly dependent on "philanthropy" from these same billionaires and they've fallen victim to what I'm going to moniker as Sinclair's Law ("It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends upon not understanding it" -Upton Sinclair)
keybored · 1h ago
America just lives under capitalism.
msgodel · 1h ago
There are plenty of countries that don't like capitalism. If you don't like it you can move to one of those. You can even go somewhere like the UK if you don't want to give up the US's anglo/protestant culture.
keybored · 44m ago
Tell my mother and friends (hypothetical) that. Where do you get off, honestly? You also changed the subject.
I also don't live in the US.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 1h ago
> It's about time we add some new amendments to the constitution
Can't be done. Amendments need a majority of states, and the states are gerrymandered towards the Republican party, which hates the working class.
We need left-wing Presidents that will lie to get voted in, and then wreck shit once they're in. Abolish the Senate. Pack the Supreme Court. Make every place that pays taxes into a state so they all get votes. Dissolve ICE. Ignore Congress. It works for the assholes.
Alive-in-2025 · 8m ago
We have a lot of problems in the US but electing our own shyster based on lies to get a democratic president isn't going to fix the problem.
We'll need a truth and reconciliation group after or if Trump gets out of power. We need significant reforms, like getting rid of the electoral college and making supreme court justices have term limits but also not be able to take bribes. Also the president should not have immunity - the unitary executive theory is incredibly dangerous and destructive.
bell-cot · 1h ago
If you look at history, this is an ancient pattern.
In Judaeo-Christian scriptures, the prohibitions against anyone acquiring ownership of land go all the way back to the Torah.
Though like pretty much every religious prohibition on behaviors which the well-to-do want to do - those commandments fall under the "we never talk about that part" rule.
There is no biblical prohibition against owning land, but there is plenty of debate, discussion and grappling with the problems of ownership and accumulation. It shows it always an issue, and rules and laws and social norms always need to be debated and changed.
legitster · 1h ago
In the Levitical law, there was specifically a concept that all of the land in Israel be split up equally among families. And that ownership of the land reverts every 49 years. So "buying" land was tantamount to a lease.
There is actually some interesting scholarly work that shows such a system would work perfectly fine within a modern capitalist system - it would reduce inequality and neatly lines up with natural debt cycles.
KaiserPro · 1h ago
owning land? no, holding debt for longer than 7 years very much so.
but you know, that interferes with commerce too much. (also part of the reason for huge amounts of anti-Semitism from about 1100-now )
Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit -- not even better than holding t-bills. The margins get better as you get bigger but still not great.
Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol. Everybody in your area will instantly know you're a big wig if you're one of the X family who has 2,000 acres all without the ick that comes with running other businesses. You can't buy that kind of status in my community with anything other than land.
> Note: The 12 selected counties had some of the highest cash rents in the state. For the purposes of this analysis, a business entity was defined as an organization with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co, Corp, LP or LLP tag. This land is not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses.
Edit: apparently not that buried...
> These acres are not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses because they offer tax benefits and externalize losses.
Non-judgmental curious question: why do you keep doing it? (As opposed to selling the land and buying tbills.)
Also non-judgmental curious question: what is this "ick" related to non-farming businesses?
I had a coworker once who lived in this region and owned some amount of farmland in a similar situation. He could have sold it and moved his family to <insert modest paradise here, in his case Florida> at any point; even now I think it would be easily done, if not as easy as in the past. But of course he still lives there, immiserating himself to keep the farm barely viable and working a second job to provide a livable salary.
Why? Because selling it would offend his dead father’s pride.
Vertical integration can have benefits, but it isn't necessary and has drawbacks. Even when vertically integrated, regulations are often written under the assumption that everything is leased, not owned, so compliance is easier if you own a company that owns an asset, instead of owning that asset directly.
For example, if two people carpool in a car that one of them owns, instead of hiring a taxi, they'll usually split the costs of the fuel and the wear on the car. On the other hand, if they were flying in a small airplane owned by one of them, it's illegal to split the costs of wear on the airplane, unless its a rental or air taxi. Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.
Sounds nice but it's not true in the US. A majority (60%) of US land in farms is owner-operated.[1] US homeownership is 65% meaning most housing units are owner-occupied.[2] And 60% of North American airplanes are owner-operated not leased.[3]
[1]https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v... [2]https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/07/2... [3]https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/publications/economi...
I guess, for me, most would have to be something north of 80% because it just doesn't feel right to use it below that. 65% would be majority, obviously, maybe significant majority or some such.
Anyone else feel this way?
Most people who voted for President in 2020, voted for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
The majority of people who voted for President in 2020, voted for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/most
No, "most" does not mean "80%" or any other made up number.
You need ~$1M worth of equipment to farm 80 acres (~$1M worth of land), but that same equipment can basically farm 800 acres (~10M worth of land). An equipment issue can destroy a years worth of work with 800 acres (e.g. frost damage from delays), but with 8000 acres you can have spares / avoid the loss with some overtime.
Fertilizer and pesticides aren't neatly contained. If you farm different crops than your neighbors, overspray can kill your yield (e.g. weeds spray for corn kills soybeans). Laws around who can grow/spray what and being big helps make that better
All new? That seems way too low. You'd struggle to get into a combine alone.
Used? That seems way too high. I doubt I'd get any more than $300k for my equipment (and that's more than I paid) if I were to sell it today, and it's pretty nice equipment compared to what I see a lot of farmers using.
> 80 acres (~$1M worth of land)
We always wonder why so cheap? The 18 acres for sale down the road from me wants just about $1M (I don't see that one selling, to be fair). The 130 acres further down the road wants nearly $4M (quite realistic). If you could pick up 80 acres in these parts for $1M, you just won the lottery. And, to be clear, it's not like on the edge of a city or something where other interests are driving up the price. It's just farmland. The yields are respectable, but not quite like Illinois will produce.
> with 8000 acres you can have spares
I've got spares in that $300k. Ironically, my oldest and most worn out tractor is always the one that ends up saving the day.
This isn't true:
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...
That AC and the regulations cited in it couldn't be clearer-- if you and the pilot are both going to $destination for $reasons, you and the pilot can definitely split the cost of the fuel.
Moreover, this is perfectly analogous to the carpooling example as you stated it-- two people both having a stated purpose traveling to a destination, both sharing the cost of gas/wear.
There of course could be ways to carpool where the passengers pay the total cost of the driver's gas/wear/etc. You can't do that in your airplane. But again, I think the reasons for this are glaringly obvious-- keep silicon valley from attempting to create an unregulated taxi service in the sky. (In fact, IIRC there was someone who tried over a decade ago-- perhaps these laws are a response to that?)
> Because of this, and other similar effects of FAA regulations, many small airplane owners own a company that owns the airplane, instead of owning it outright, and rent the airplane from themselves, whenever they use it.
I mean, the pilots I know who do that are either a) multiple people owning a single plane, or b) single owner literally running a rental taxi service. Who isn't covered by those two categories?
I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.
You can take your friend for a spin in your plane if you want, or go screw around and kill yourself, but you cannot "hold out" your operation as an air taxi or airline to the general public, and you can't make money off of it in any situation.
A commercial pilot has to undergo much more training in operating an aircraft safely. This means the FAA allows them to get paid to be a pilot - they could be hired to fly someone around in that person's plane. But the commercial license does not really train them in running a safe airline, so the FAA does not allow them to use their own plane to run an airline.
EDIT: To word it differently, the opportunity to get paid increases the likelihood that someone will push limits or take unsafe risks. If you aren't under pressure to make your paycheck, you're less likely to take your passengers into marginal weather. (One of the most dangerous occupations in aviation is medivac/aviation EMS. There, the pressure isn't generally monetary but moral: you want to help a sick patient, so you take more risks.)
A grandfather-in-law owned his own small business (a civil engineering firm), and had a plane that he flew to get to meetings/job sites across the Midwest. He could fly company employees just fine- and the company could reimburse him for the flight expense, and since it was not for the public that was fine. He could fly his family or friends on his own dime just fine. But if a family member or friend not working for the company tried to compensate him for the costs, then it is a question of "is his company actually an unlicensed airline?" and now we're getting into territory where it gets complicated. The FAA heavily regulates airlines, which is a major reason they are so safe. But there has to be a lower bound on what gets regulated, and avoiding that is what I think that GP is referencing.
Government should focus on making it easier for new companies to compete as that is what generally yields better and/or less expensive products.
I would also push back on the notion that owner-operators are in a better position. It's more accurate to say that farmers who have assets of any kind are better off than those who don't have assets. As an example, generations back in my family we owned a lot of farmland. There were some bad investments made in the farming operation and we almost lost it all. This was in the early 1980s for those who are familiar.
If my grandfather had sold all of his land and equipment in the late 1970s and invested it in the recently-started Vanguard group, rather than re-investing in the farming operation, then my family would be wealthy. Now expecting a farmer to know about index investing and to bet on it when it was just starting is unreasonable. But it's a good lesson in diversification.
When people lionize farming owner-operators, they discount the risk that owner is taking by having so many assets concentrated in one operation. Now farmers do know about investing and diversification, and some do make the rational decision to cash out. Many also don't, for various reasons.
But it's not totally fair to expect farmers to behave differently than other asset owners because farming is seen romantically or in terms of national security.
This is a different argument than one which would decry the position of tenant farmers. Obviously being a tenant farmer owning nothing but equipment is harder than being a farmer who has $5 million invested somewhere else and rents the land he farms.
Fun fact: the guy who lead the team at Wells Fargo doing the research that was given to Bogle and used to start Vanguard grew up on a farm in Sandwich, IL.
He always said that growing corn was a numbers game; looking at numbers was his whole life.
Also, farming is mom and pop highly optimized operation. Those two don’t need to be separate things. Once you understand that running a farm can be hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions, you can understand the disconnect.
Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
BigAg farms? You're absolutely right.
And yet, farmers are a vocal and critical political bloc in every other EU country, too.
Farming is just important. Not as much because it employs a large portion of the population, but because it keeps a large portion of the population alive. It is the original industry that's "too big to fail" - if you let it, you get famine.
Once you start thinking about that, a lot of the mystery or 'inefficiency' of farming in the USA makes more sense. For example, the subsidies to grow corn and soy but not kale and squash or whatever was in the article- growing kale and squash isn't a strategic priority.
It set up the critical vulnerability that we have today, that in states where the votes are close at the state level, switching just a handful of votes completely moves the votes in the electoral college. This will be a continuing temptation, and a weakness of the us system. The 200 or 300k votes in swing states that had Biden beating Trump and then Trump beating Harris this time is not a great thing in democracy.
So this vulnerability makes it a potential attraction to steal votes. There was the notorious recorded phone call when Trump called up the Secretary of State in Georgia and said he only needed 11,700 votes, please give them to him.
https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/profile-of-agricult...
It's interesting how little of NY state is farmland (21.6%).
"When the extended family of the farmer is taken into consideration, 94.6 percent of New York farms are family-owned."
At this point I think it's basically impossible to actually lose money on a farm as long as it's family/individual owner-operator.
It's also why NY state cropland is among the most expensive in the country. Once you get it, the value will only ever go up regardless of crop yield in any given year.
> More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP tag. Sangamon and Edgar counties were included in this analysis because historical data was not needed.
The TL;DR is that Illinois is one of the few states where there aren't restrictions on farmland owners, and even there it's a small (if growing) problem.
I think this is one of those problems that should theoretically be self-limiting. The economics of a farming family owning their land is too strong - just from the amount of tax breaks and subsidies available. Put another way, the land in a farmer's hands is worth more than in a corporation's.
I think the real risk comes from large farm landholders who want to cash out of their farm but don't have an heir or successor lined up. Farmers are getting old and their kids more often than not don't want to run the family farm anymore and there simply aren't going to be any other buyers.
We sold it to some outside group. Apparently the best way to sell land today is an online action. You announce it ahead of time, there is a minimal amount to start bidding, and then like an ad auction, there is a minimal increment to go up by, fixed time limit of like a week to bid.
I was really sad that it left the family. The sale price of the midwest farm land ended up about $10k an acre for cropland. The amount of money that renting brought in didn't seem like it would be enough for any young person to actually buy land at current prices. I am sure they'd have a lot of tax deductions but can they get a million dollar loan? I expect there will be houses put on the land eventually. I had an idea for how to keep it suitable for future farmland, which was to put solar power on it with a 20 year contract with a local power company (with everything removed after).
I inherited farm land from my grandfather. I am very much not a farmer, I do not want to live in Southern Illinois, but I don’t want to give up the land, so I rent the land to a farmer with adjacent property.
I realize that’s not really the point of this article—this is more about huge firms buying up non-trivial amounts of land.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDQXFNWuZj8&t=122s
Isn’t this the historical norm? Anyway, we don’t live in a communist utopia, so most people don’t own their workplace, farmers or not.
Farm subsidies are both the single most important national security policy a nation can have, and an incredibly inexpensive yet extremely effective insurance policy.
Need more legal immigration, and paying Brazil, etc. not to farm there. Better to do that than subsidize farmers.
- Use arable land where it exists, not just where the cheapest labor is
- Don't do deforestation or other such things
I would like policies that directly address this:
- Legal immigration fairly moves the people the arible land, rather than moving the farming to the cheap people. The goal would be in 200 years there is enough economic development and immigration that there is no longer global scale labor arbitrage.
- Paying to protect the land we directly care about directly protects that land, and removes the incentive to farm there after all. (If you farm there, you loose the preservation rent.)
Farmers in brazil are notoriously far-right-wing, just like else where, and so paying the gov to not farm has other return-to-center-and-sanity benefits too.
I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
No, I don't love biofuels either. but it's not entirely a bad idea.
Again, however, if he is genuine: I genuinely wish him the best luck taking on his matched opponents.
I also don't live in the US.
Can't be done. Amendments need a majority of states, and the states are gerrymandered towards the Republican party, which hates the working class.
We need left-wing Presidents that will lie to get voted in, and then wreck shit once they're in. Abolish the Senate. Pack the Supreme Court. Make every place that pays taxes into a state so they all get votes. Dissolve ICE. Ignore Congress. It works for the assholes.
We'll need a truth and reconciliation group after or if Trump gets out of power. We need significant reforms, like getting rid of the electoral college and making supreme court justices have term limits but also not be able to take bribes. Also the president should not have immunity - the unitary executive theory is incredibly dangerous and destructive.
In Judaeo-Christian scriptures, the prohibitions against anyone acquiring ownership of land go all the way back to the Torah.
Though like pretty much every religious prohibition on behaviors which the well-to-do want to do - those commandments fall under the "we never talk about that part" rule.
EDIT:
- Please note my "against anyone ACQUIRING ownership of" phrasing, above.
- Details are in Leviticus, Chapter 25
There is actually some interesting scholarly work that shows such a system would work perfectly fine within a modern capitalist system - it would reduce inequality and neatly lines up with natural debt cycles.
but you know, that interferes with commerce too much. (also part of the reason for huge amounts of anti-Semitism from about 1100-now )