Who’s buying Nebraska? Foreign companies deeply involved in farmland — but not how you think – Flatwater Free Press

On sweltering summer days

Mike Zakrzewski’s cows neatly line themselves up by the hundreds in their pastures.

They shift sideways as the sun crosses the sky, following a narrow line of cool shade cast by their steel pasture-mates.

In 2016, 200 wind turbines started to spin across Holt County, some of them right in the middle of Zakrzewski’s fields.

“We farm and we graze right up to the turbine bases,” he says.

Zakrzewski is one of the farmers who signed easement contracts for the Grande Prairie Wind Farm, a massive 50,000-acre project tied to foreign ownership of Nebraska farmland – though not in the way you might expect.

For starters, that 50,000-acre project doesn’t use anywhere near that much ground, Zakrzewski said. Each wind turbine occupies roughly a 100-foot diameter, meaning that combined with access roads, the Grand Prairie Wind Farm actually uses closer to 125 acres of Holt County land.

And the wind farm project is actually owned by a very famous, very local name. Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns Grande Prairie Wind LLC. Grande Prairie, as required by federal law, reported that a foreign entity – in this case likely a foreign investor – had an interest in the project.

Which is how Italy came to be listed as having a foreign interest of 50,000 acres of Nebraska farmland in an oft-cited – and oft-misunderstood – representation of how much land foreign countries or companies control here.

Nebraska’s foreign owners

In Flatwater Free Press’s analysis of the top 100 buyers of the past five years, only one foreign buyer appears: Blackshirt Feeders LP, a cattle feedlot in Dundy County partially owned by Canadian citizens.

Multinational companies, headquartered in the U.S. but operating globally, also appear in both the top 100 lists for value and acres. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, is No. 4 in money spent after buying both ag and commercial land, largely for data center construction, under the name Raven Northbrook. Google has bought land under the name Westwood Solutions. So has shipping giant ULINE under the name Duck Creek Ranch.

Several farming corporations on the top buyer lists also have operations in other countries.

But no corporations or individuals from China, or any country other than Canada, appeared among the top buyers in recent ag land sales data.

“It’s probably not the crisis of land ownership that sometimes the public perceives,” Leonard said, “but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other issues with foreign entities acquiring lesser than title interests.”

In Nebraska, most foreign interests in agriculture come in the form of easements and leases instead of direct land ownership.

Canada and Italy together make up about 93% of the total acres under foreign interest in Nebraska. The vast majority of those Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosures Act (AFIDA) filings are renewable energy projects located in Holt, Antelope and Banner counties.

“Many of these companies do have foreign roots,” said John Snow, a renewable energy project lawyer who practices in Nebraska. “Solar and wind have been a bigger part of those economies for some time, so they’ve gained some expertise and then they come here to develop.”

Other companies, like the German-owned Monsanto, the Chinese-owned Syngenta Seeds and the Japanese-owned Kawasaki, own farmland around their production and manufacturing plants, as is allowed by Nebraska law that makes an exception for manufacturing and industrial uses.

Individual landowners from other countries and estates also hold some of Nebraska’s foreign interests.

In total, less than 2% of Nebraska’s land in acres has any reported foreign interest, in full ownership or leases.

AFIDA is considered by researchers to be the best data source available for tracking foreign interest in ag land. But it is flawed, because the information offered is basic, and doesn’t differentiate between different types of ownerships.

“We have seen a pretty sharp increase in the number of acres in Nebraska on which people have come under the AFIDA disclosure reporting requirements – a very sharp increase,” Leonard said.

That increase is significant, but potentially misleading, because large scale leases for the development of wind farms account for almost all of the newly reported acres.

The Agriculture Committee is working on an interim study to understand foreign interests in Nebraska beyond AFIDA reports, and to determine if legislation is needed to address the rise in reported interests.

“It’s a topical topic that people are raising concerns about,” Leonard said. “I know a number of states have acted to put in place legislation that would place some regulation or restriction on foreign entities’ ownership of property.”

A 19th-century law still in play today

Nebraska is one of the few states that ban people who aren’t U.S. citizens from owning farmland, or leasing it for longer than five years, said Dave Aiken, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agricultural law professor.

And Nebraska has banned foreign ownership since 1889, tied to a once-infamous name in the Midwest and Great Plains: William Scully.

Scully, an Irish citizen, traveled to the United States in 1850 and began buying up giant plots of Midwest farmland, including in Nebraska. He then leased his thousands of acres out, becoming one of the first foreign landlords in the state. He was known for forcing renters to take good care of the land, putting in conservation practices far ahead of his time. He was also known for being hard-driving, hard-headed and tight-fisted.

Scully became a U.S. citizen in 1900, only six years before he died. Citizenship was his response to states like Nebraska passing laws, many targeting him, that sought to limit or ban foreign ownership of farmland.

While Nebraska has long had such a ban, it’s far from airtight. There are exceptions, including for oil and gas companies, railroads, land purchased for manufacturing or industrial uses, and notably, land within 3 miles of a city or village, Aiken said.

And Nebraska’s foreign ownership laws also lack specific enforcement mechanisms or penalties for holding land illegally.

“Nebraska has some decent laws regarding foreign ownership, but they’re quite dated,” said State Sen. Steve Halloran, Republican of Hastings. “My concern is that (

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 1: No Poverty
• SDG 2: Zero Hunger
• SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
• SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
• SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• SDG 13: Climate Action
• SDG 15: Life on Land

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property.
• SDG 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding, and other disasters, and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
• SDG 7.2: By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
• SDG 8.9: By 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products.
• SDG 11.4: Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
• SDG 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.
• SDG 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning.
• SDG 15.1: By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services, in particular forests, wetlands, mountains, and drylands, in line with obligations under international agreements.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure.
• Indicator 2.4.1: Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture.
• Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption.
• Indicator 8.9.1: Tourism direct GDP as a proportion of total GDP and in growth rate.
• Indicator 11.4.1: Total expenditure (public and private) per capita spent on the preservation, protection, and conservation of all cultural and natural heritage.
• Indicator 12.2.1: Material footprint, material footprint per capita, and material footprint per GDP.
• Indicator 13.2.1: Number of countries that have communicated the establishment or operationalization of an integrated policy/strategy/plan which increases their ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development in a manner that does not threaten food production.
• Indicator 15.1.1: Forest area as a proportion of total land area.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators Table

Source: flatwaterfreepress.org

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