Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Hold Off the Land Grabbers

Winter looks like it’s on its last legs, and, hooray for home gardens. Figuring out how to eat and how to grow it is step one in creating a local food system for yourself and your community.

But it’s too soon in most of the Midwest to put those baby plants in the ground. I’m always afraid of March, with its seductive pretty days. There’s a blizzard just around the corner. Better to spend the time checking out the doings at your state capitol, where Republican lawmakers, also on their last legs, are creating mischief that will impact everything for a long time. Voting rights, abortion rights and even the ability for a young family to buy land are under attack in General Assemblies like ours in Missouri. It’s time to give your state lawmakers a long, hard look and chime in on the things you care about.

Are your lawmakers making it too easy for foreign corporations to buy your state’s farmland? That’s happened here. For too many years, Midwesterners have been involved in battles with giant agribusiness corporations trying to grab land that should be available to independent family farmers. The big buyers keep consolidating, so that when an ordinary player tries to break into the game, perhaps to raise food for the community, the tracts and prices are so high they don’t have a chance.

The land grab situation is beginning to get attention from media. The game has always been global with corporations like Dole and Chiquita snatching up land where bananas grow. Kicking the indigenous people off the land they’ve used for generations, or making them wage slaves on giant corporate plantations, is a tradition going back before the Civil War.

In recent weeks, TIAA, a giant pension company that once went by the name “TIAA-Cref,” has gotten attention for land grabbing in Brazil. A report by GRAIN, an international organization that supports local land ownership, says that TIAA broke a ban against foreign ownership of Brazilian land, sold off timber and burned the forests. They aren’t raising bananas, but soybeans. All of this is wrong from a planetary perspective.

First wrong: the disruption of peasant landholders, who then are forced to leave and become unwanted immigrants in northern countries. Think of those legions of migrants at the southern US border. Where did they start out?

Second wrong: The end of forests in Brazil, which has been called “Earth’s lungs” because of the carbon dioxide trapped by the greenery. While many scientists dispute the importance of oxygen production by the plants, others say that the jungle plays an important role in cooling the planet, and that mankind might even benefit from foods and medicines made of the unique plants and animals we haven’t discovered there yet.

Third wrong: More soybeans? Much of the bean crop has gone to Cargill, which, through subsidiaries, supplies soybean oil to food giants like McDonald’s and KFC. That miracle crop is being used for animal feed, yes, but is also a major ingredient in plant-based proteins like veggie burgers. Our diets need more diversity, that’s for sure. And, most are genetically altered so there’s more chemical poisons being applied with each crop.

Land grabs are part of South America because the native tribes and villagers living in the jungles have, to say the least, a tenuous hold. Like the Native Americans in our own hemisphere, they didn’t know that land could be owned, titled, sold, inhabited by stronger groups with better weapons. One researcher from Rio de Janeiro estimates that more than 4.2 million acres in Brazil are controlled by foreigners, even though the law restricts foreign ownership.

TIAA has been part of the land grabbing scheme for years. As America’s largest holder of educators’ retirement funds, TIAA has proclaimed itself socially responsible, but that title is misleading. Interestingly, the investments in land make sense to other pension funds, which are hopping on-board, especially in America. And who’s farming all that land? Another set of giants has sprung up, and these are giant agribusiness corporations that own huge equipment and drive it south to north, following the harvests.

A newcomer to the land-grabbing fraternity is Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft. His organizations have become the largest farmland owners in the US, with an estimated 242,000 acres, but there are other mega-buyers nipping at his heels.

Here in Missouri, laws were changed a few years ago to allow foreign corporations to buy farmland. Chinese-owned Smithfield immediately snatched up about a county. Smithfield raises pork, in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and sell it under the names Cook’s, Eckrich, Gwaltney, John Morrell, Krakus and Smithfield—names of companies that once were independent, but are now part of the conglomeration.

Could the same thing happen in your state? It’s time to find out. And, in the meantime, support those local farmers working to hold on to their little pieces of land. And, oh yeah, get ready to plant your garden!

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History”. Email: margotmcmillen@ gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2021

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