Mar 03 2023 March 3, 2023 March 3, 2023 2Comments by Mike Callicrate

Globalist End Game: Taking Over Farmland in the US, EU and Ukraine; Family Farms Slammed

Posted in

Globalist End Game: Taking Over Farmland in the US, EU and Ukraine; Family Farms Slammed

By Robert L. Baker

March 3, 2023 (EIRNS)–Three reports have been released recently that document how a massive interlinked corporate system is consolidating control over farmland in the high-tech production regions of the USA and the EU, and in Ukraine in particular. First, look at Ukraine, which is a kind of model, given the way the globalists moved in to dominate agriculture beginning in the 1990s.

Ukraine. See "War and Theft, The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land," a 33 page report posted Feb. 21, 2023, by the Oakland Institute, which is an authority on what has happened in agriculture since the 1990s in Ukraine. Land takeovers are underway from a mix of oligarchs and various investment groupings – mostly North America and Europe-based, involving private equity funds, and the Saudi Arabia sovereign fund. "All but one of the ten largest land holding firms are registered overseas, mainly in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg." The report identifies prominent investors, like the Vanguard Group, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings; and there are a number of large US pension funds, foundations, and university endowments invested in Ukrainian land through NCH Capital – a US-based private equity fund, which is the fifth largest landholder in Ukraine.

Ukraine has 33 million hectares (2.47 acres/hectare) of the best farmland in the world. Since the early 1990’s corrupt governance has concentrated the land into a new oligarchic class. The bulk of 4.3 million hectares are under large-scale agriculture. With 3 million hectares in the hands of just twelve large agribusiness firms. According to the government, another five million hectares – the size of two Crimea’s – have been "stolen" by private interests from the state of Ukraine. The total amount of land controlled by the oligarchs, corrupt individuals, and large agribusinesses is thus over nine million hectares, an exceedingly percent of the country’s arable land. The rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers. https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/war-theft-takeover-ukraine-agricultural-land

European Union. See "Farms and Farmland in the European Union," the latest edition, in the ongoing series from Eurostat, published by the European Union. The figures show that between 2005 and 2020, the EU lost 5.5 million farms, which is 37%. Using 2020 statistics, as of that time there were three groupings of farm structures. (1.) semi-subsistence farms; (2.) small- and medium-size farms; and (3.) large agricultural enterprises and cooperatives. Of the EU’s 9.1 million farms in 2020, the biggest 3.3% produced 56.4% of the food; and the remaining 96.7% of farms produced 43.6% of the agricultural output.

United States. "America’s Farms and Ranches at a Glance, 2022 Edition," released December 27, 2022 by the Economic Research Service of the USDA. The report shows that as of 2021, of the 2.1 million remaining US farms, 5.3% of that total number produced 63.8 percent of total output; 10.9% of the total produced 82.3 percent of total output; and 84.7% of all US farmers produced only 10.3 percent of US farm output. In the next 15 years over 50% of US farmers will retire. Most do not have an heir coming back to run the farm. With high inflation and interest rates, it is projected that financial investor-owned corporations, as in Ukraine, will come in to take over and supercede the highly productive US family farm system. https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=105387