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Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Delaware Extension
Livestock
buildings for
all seasons!
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1185 York Rd
Gettysburg, PA 17325
RD #lO, Box 76
Meadville, PA 16335
State College, Box 361
Centre Hall, PA 16828
Box 126
Philhpsburg, NJ 08865
1918 Industrial Drive
Culpeper, VA 22701...
P.O. Box 187
Harrington, DE 19952
i The recent dip in U.S. farmland
prices is causing some renewed
interest by foreigners in buying
U.S. farmland. Not that there is
any great rush. There never has
. been and the easing of land prices
although undoubltedly temporary
won’t make rural America a
Mecca for foreign investors.
Thw most recent data I’ve seen
' still indicates that foreigners own
less than one percent of our total
land area. But in some places
notably the south, the con
centration is much higher.
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North
1 Carolina, South Carolina, Ten
nessee and Texas account for
about one-third of all foreign
owned acreages. And in some
counties in those states the foreign
influence is quite noticeable.
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How do the neighbors feel when a
foreigner moves in and starts
tilling American acres?
Progressive Farmer magazine
asked some farmers how they felt
about foreign neighbors. Some say
it’s OK.
Others are not so sure. While a
lot of foreign owned farmland is
held by absentee owners, some are
actually living on the land. Pierre
Brueder, a Frenchman who owns a
farm in Terrell County, Georgia,
may be typical of those foreigners
squeezed out of their own country
by high land prices and lack of
opportunity. Brueder says he
doesn’t like the politics in his
country. He thinks a lot more
Frenchmen would like to farm in
the United States.
Adolph Scherer, a German
Ph. 717/334-2168
Ph 814/336-5083
Ph. 814/364-9500
Ph. 201/454-7900
Ph. 703/825-3633
Ph. 302/398-8100
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 2,1984—D25
citizen, bought a spread in Delta
County, Texas, much to the
chagrin of his U.S. neighbors. Most
would have preferred having the
land belong to an American far
mer. But over time Scherer has
won most of them over by being a
good farmer and a good neighbor.
Many of the foreign buyers of
U.S. farmland are not unlike some
U.S. farmers who have sold out in
highly urbanized areas and moved
to the boondocks so to speak to get
away from the big city pressures.
In somewhat the same way,
Brueder and Scherer and others like
them have done the same thing.
They’ve moved away from a
highly restrictive, politically
troubled agriculture to the wide
open spaces of America where
they feel the farming opportunities
are better. As a farmer tilling the
land in Nebraska or Arkansas or
even on the Delmarva peninsula
what difference does it make who
owns the next farm as long as it’s a
good neighbor. Who’s to say that a
displaced farmer from New Castle
County, Delaware, would be any
better or any worse than one from
Germany or France. It really gets
down to the people involved rather
than the concept. You don’t have to
go back many generations to find a
lot of foreigners tilling American
soil. In fact most of America’s vast
farming acres were first plowed by
foreigners. And who’s to say
Brueder and Scherer and others
like them won’t become U.S.
citizens some day and won’t be a
valuable part of their rural
communities.
Many states restrict foreign
ownership of farmland. Some
farmers would rule it out
altogether. The concept of a
wealthy Arab or some kind of
European nobility buying up huge
tracts of land bothers them. But
the strength of the U.S. dollar and
the end of the land boom has
quieted much of that activity. The
experts really don’t expect a
continuance of the relatively milk
foreign involvement of the mid to
late 70s. It’s more likely to be a
few foreign farmers settling here
and there around the country as
their finances and desires dictate.
And given a generation or two, I
expect those so-called foreigners
will be as American as any of the
rest of us.
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