We recently appeared in a News Nation article about the spike in farmland acquisitions by private investors. Our policy proposal, the Farmland for Farmers Act, would protect farmland from corporation land grabs and speculation.
Jordan Treakle from the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) is concerned about the deep-pocketed investors. He worries they’ll price out smaller farmers and further consolidate the nation’s food supply.
“When you have a few players holding a lot of power in multiple parts of our food system, there’s less resilience, and that leads to less competition,” said Treakle, NFFC’s national program coordinator.
From 2017 to 2022, the U.S. lost nearly 142,000 farms, according to the latest Census of Agriculture. Over the same period, the average farm size increased by 5%.
American farmers are also getting older. The average age of all producers increased to 58.1 years, up from 57.5 in 2017. That means more land could hit the market soon.