I need to first say that I love the Chinese people, as many thousands are my brothers and sisters in Christ (the Chinese church is one of the most vibrant and motivated church bodies on the globe, as persecution grows faith – see Acts).
But China, the communist political entity, can go to hell – they lie, cheat, steal, rape, and murder their own citizens routinely, as did their hero Mao Zedong, and he (barring a last-minute repentance, which is unlkely) is very likely in hell right now.
Back to the task at hand. Why in the world would anyone sell land to the country’s most dangerous enemy, the Chi-Coms?! I truly hope our congress will somehow get together and make it illegal to sell land to China, but we’re talking about congress here, so it is highly unlikely to happen (especially since the entire democrat party is in bed with the Chi-Coms!).
Anyway, on to the story:
https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2021/07/26/why-are-we-selling-farmland-to-china-n416549
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15 replies on “Why Are We Selling Farmland to China?”
It appears to be a means for rich Chinese subjects to hide money from the CCP, same as many other Chinese real estate holdings overseas.
It may in fact be a net positive to have Chinese money over here instead of being taxed or invested in Chinese infrastructure or military technology.
Land is not particularly portable. The Chinese can’t take it anywhere. Australia just took back a lot of the property China was sold over the years. China made the mistake of threatening us.
Its not all communist Chinese purchases there are exceptions. A lot of purchases are Chinese getting some of their money out of the country so if/ when the Party falls and there is a crisis they have somewhere to go and are not bankrupt refugees.
“Land is not particularly portable.”————Thanks for the levity!!!!! I’m still laughing!!!!!!!
There is a link below in a separate comment that relates each states’ regulation dealing with foreign ownership of agricultural land. Some states have no regulation. Part of State Sovereignty in the good ol’ USA. Perhaps some states should rethink not having any.
Bill Gates owns more acreage than what is reported for the Chinese. The Redstate link above and a Zero Hedge article both quote the same 1982,000 agricultural acres:
Lawmakers Sound Alarm Over China Purchases Of US Farmland | ZeroHedge
By the beginning of 2020, Chinese owners controlled approximately 192,000 agricultural acres in the US, worth around $1.9 billion – including land used for farming, ranching and forestry, according to the Department of Agriculture. It’s a small but growing percentage of the nearly 900 million acres of total US farmland – with the USDA reporting in 2018 that China’s agricultural investments have grown more than tenfold since 2009.
Bill Gates Becomes America’s Largest Farmland Owner While ‘Great Reset” Says Future Is ‘No Private Property’ | ZeroHedge
Gates now owns 242,000 acres of farmland across the U.S., mostly “through third-party entities by Cascade Investments, Gates’ personal investment vehicle.”
That is a bit ironic isn’t it? The guy who wants to force you to eat synthetic meat has almost a quarter of a million acres of farmland. Wonder what breed of bovine he has. Our best bull was a Simmental I named Big Sam. He sired 65% bull calves. Good thing we weren’t needing replacement heifers at the time.
Bill wants us to eat synthetic “meat” made from plants that grow on his farmland.
There’s a danger in someone like Bill Gates, or any other purported ideologue, owning vast tracts of farmland. You don’t have to own or control a majority of something to have a huge influence on production prices.
This was a large part of the reasoning behind denying Saddam Hussein possession of the Kuwaiti oil fields in the First Gulf War. It’s not that having a majority allows full control, that grants a lot of control but cornering the market on a globally distributed commodity is pretty hard to do.
It’s that holding a significant minority can unduly influence the market by withholding production. Saddam Hussein could have taken the Kuwaiti fields offline to reduce global production driving up the prices from his own oil production. Resulting in lower infrastructure costs and much higher prices for oil he was producing anyway. It was estimated that with the Kuwaiti fields Hussein would have controlled between a fifth and a third of global oil resources and that was a significant minority.
Bill Gates can do something similar.
I.E. Let’s say Bill wants to see a higher price for his soybeans (that he makes fake meat from) so he leaves his soybean fields lie fallow for a couple years, or plants corn instead. A glut of corn makes that market fall and a dearth of soybeans makes that market rise.
A lot of corn is grown for ethanol fuel additive so the price of corn never gets below a certain point, he knows he’ll still make money to resource his farming operations. Meanwhile he does the R&D and marketing of his ‘fake meat’ in the two or more years of reduced soybean production.
The price of soybeans goes up, the ‘fake meat’ hits the market creating a greater demand for soybeans and Bill puts soybeans back into production at a substantially higher long term price per bushel.
This is how farming works. Farmers are businessmen with their own self-interests.
The difference here is a farmer named Bill Gates who controls a significant minority rather than a whole lot of smaller operations doing their own thing. Farmers will not “band together” and create a bloc, it’s been tried and has failed miserably in the past. By owning a significant minority Bill accomplishes essentially the same thing as far as market prices are concerned.
There are three vital primary industries in which we do not want any one entity to gain a significant majority; energy, food and housing. A significant minority in any of those three areas can result in artificially increased prices. There is a company named Blackrock attempting to do just that in housing in California.
The thing about this is that it’s still “capitalism”, but it’s the kind of soul-less, detrimental capitalism that has the sports and entertainment industries catering to China. Unregulated, rampant capitalism is as inimical to individual liberty as any other extreme. This kind of thing advances the cause of socialistic Communism as much as any other factor.
Disquieting actions from Blackrock.
Concerned About BlackRock Pricing Out Home Buyers? Wait Until You Hear How Connected They Are To The Government | The Daily Caller
“This Is Wealth Redistribution”: Blackrock And Other Institutional Investors Buying Entire Neighborhoods At Huge Premiums | ZeroHedge
The farmers with at least 1,000 acres and John Deere equipment always seemed to be receiving the government subsidies. Their wives were driving diesel cars until the government made off road diesel a certain color.
Here’s what I think of Gates—–
192000 acres is an area only 300 square miles or 17 miles on edge. 242,000 acres is 378 square miles or 19 miles on edge. We have farms in Australia that are bigger than that. In the mid west of the USA that is only about 10 big wheat farms. Gates is protecting his capital in an inflation proof investment. Hyper-inflation makes farmers rich if they need no fertilizer or fuel. Or if they have stocked up when its cheap. Yes there are solar and ethanol tractors but I doubt he owns them. He will just have a big tank of diesel.
When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City we were all shocked and heartbroken. But, for farmers that meant MORE for fertilizer. Our cost for our small farm went from $200 to $1,200 at that time. That meant we had to sell more bull calves.
I adored baling hay near fall because that meant far less chance of rain. I had to learn to rake. First with a 36 hp tractor, then a 75 hp Massey-Ferguson. We used a side delivery rake at first with the smaller tractor. That took two passes to create one windrow. The V-rake meant only one pass and that was less stressful for me since I had only one pass around the field to make instead of two.
Am I grateful for my farming days? Yes. Would I go back to it at my age? NO.
Are you under lockdown where you live?
Am I in lockdown? No not really. I wore a mask today, etc to the office but then I work in disability support and some of the clients are in the highest risk category.
The the PM just defined a set of conditions to end the panicked mess in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. My suburb never had an outbreak and is at 70% immunization, first dose, of a vaccine that works. The problem in Australia’s three big cities is complex. Leftwing state and city government that bought Chinese testing technology that does not work and refused the warnings from the Federal government because its not left wing.
The Liberal Party of Australia is conservative. I’m a member and we just had a precinct meeting where the people I campaigned for in November took over and kicked out the guys that were in charge before. We have wets = RINO’s and dry’s = tea party. The PM and most party are now very dry.
The biggest panic in Sydney may be because some Marxist city council person may have got him and all his friends immunized early with a free Chinese vaccine. The vaccine’s been tested, the Chinese one does not work. There is a good chance hard left people in the USA fell for the same thing. In response to Orange Man Bad they ran to China for their fix. There are also indications that there is complete panic in China with party bosses trying to get reimmunized with western vaccines.
Communism can’t even get germ warfare right!
Well, they did create a coronavirus that has 4 entryways into human cells—
ACE2
CD147
Neuropilin 1
Cell Adhesion Molecules
And they added PRRA, the polybasic furin cleavage site inserted into the spike protein to create a 1,000 fold tighter binding.
I am still trying to process that your Liberal Party is conservative. Semantics.
Thank you for the explanation of your politics. Boil it all down and Communists/Socialists are evil.
Only America gave away the term liberal to the communist scum. No-one else was stupid enough to do so. lol. The USA has given the left the terms Democrat, Confederate, progressive, liberal, etc. The rest of the world thinks you’re nuts to do it once but you’ve done it a dozen times. Europe has done it too by allowing the left to have the term social democrats. All over the world liberal means center right not leftist.
Here’s an “explanation”—–
I agree with everything you said. The answer to your question of “Why would anyone sell land to the Chi-Coms?” is a simple one. They pay the highest prices. Which should be no surprise.
As long as Americans are free to do with their own property as they choose, that is a price we must pay in sovereignty as well as real estate. A farmer is going to take the highest price for anything when he sells it, just like the rest of us. Perhaps more-so than the rest of us, because I came from farming country and contrary to Bill Whittle’s opinion of farmers, they will sell their grandmother for a higher commodity price.
I think we need to have a serious look at all land transactions with foreign entities. I’m not sure what we should do about it to be fair to the owner/seller and I’d be glad to have a discussion on that topic.
Regulation on foreign ownership of agricultural land: A state-by-state breakdown – Investigate MidwestInvestigate Midwest
Interesting and thanks for that. I glanced through it and most of the American “breadbasket” states have at least some sort of regulations. Many are fairly narrow. Almost none prevent someone like Bill Gates in my post above from acquiring large tracts of farmland.
Maybe the mindset of municipalities that are financed by collecting Property Taxes is that they don’t care who owns the property as long as the property taxes are paid???