Wall
Street's fake farmers are harvesting sweet profits.
By
EDITOR’S
NOTE: we’ve got lots of fake farming going on in Charlestown. More on that
later. – WC
We know from the childhood song that Old MacDonald had a farm.
But e-i-e-i-o — look who’s got his farm now. It’s outfits like
American Farmland, Farmland Partners, and BlackRock.
These aren’t dirt farmers wearing overalls and muddy boots.
They’re Wall Street hucksters in Armani suits and Gucci loafers.
The latest fast-buck fad for high-roller investment trusts,
hedge funds, and venture capital speculators is “farming.” Not that these dude
ranch dandies are actually plowing and planting.
No, no — these are soft-hands people, buying up farmland with
billions of rich investors’ dollars, then tilling the tax laws and threshing
the farmers who do the real cultivation.
None of these nouveau sodbusters has a speck of dirt under their
fingernails, but they’ve figured out how to work the land without touching it
and still harvest a sweet profit. The founder of this scheme says “It’s like
gold, but better, because there is this cash flow.”
Cash flow? Yes, farmers are charged rent to till the Wall Streeters’ land. Then
the financiers get a prime cut of any profits from the crops that the farmers
produce. Also, the combine is set up as a Real Estate Investment Trust,
providing an enormous tax break for the Wall Street plowboys.
And, of course, there’s the mega-pay the moneyed elites will
reap when they convert their scheme into securities for sale on the stock
exchange.
A few rich speculators get richer, farmers are turned into
sharecrop laborers, and farms are switched to high-profit crops that require
heavy pesticide dosages and soak up scarce water resources. Other than that,
this is one hell of a deal.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the
populist newsletter, The Hightower
Lowdown. OtherWords.org