On the topic of Bakersfield and the land around it, another piece of the puzzle that I meant to mention: I rode around with a rancher this week, and he kept pointing at things and saying, “private equity.” I knew that family, they’re gone now, private equity.
Also worth considering is third and fourth generation family members not especially interested in carrying on the family legacy in the ag business - and preferring instead to enjoy the accumulated wealth created when they sell out to PE firms or Big Food.
There is a small pre-Revolutionary War family farm near us producing delicious, reasonably priced grass fed beef. The current owner (Gen X) took over when his father died a couple of years back, but he said none of his kids want the farm, so it will end with him. So sad.
there are young farmers out there willing to take up land but they cannot compete with the big money trampling them to the gates. there ARE people who want to work and in particular want to do land stewardship. let that be known.
Wow that guy that runs that farm must be 7th-8th generation. That’s close to twice the typical generational longevity of any family owned venture. 4th-5th gen is normally when everything goes away. That’s sad his kids don’t want to be part of it.
In California, the environmental overreach and regulations, coupled with uncertain water allotments make it easier to sell to corporate than live with the constant attacks from Politicians and Eco-Nazi's. Sadly, firmly suspect that the corporate farms are in cahoots with the Politicians. Land, water and mineral rights are usually the hidden quest in California.
I saw a story on Ag Week this morning about how it was costing $1600 per acre in the Central Valley to comply with all the regulations out of Sacramento. And there’s a proposal that didn’t make it out of committee regulating nitrogen that would result in not enough N to even grow lettuce.
I have not seen a decent head of lettuce or bunch of celery in markets in over a year and wondered about it possibly being linked to the Nitrogen regulations. Add to that the push to rid the world of cattle and beef and is clear that ‘Environmentalism’ is literally going to be the death of us all.
The fertilizer issue has been the subject of widespread farmer protests in Europe over the past few years. Impoverished soil = impoverished (and starving) people. That would up the chances of igniting the revolution…very Stalinesque.
It's not just nitrogen, there is a far darker agenda. A while back the Economist did a pretty good piece of research showing that higher yields were leading to rewilding for marginal farmlands. This natural economic process was a good thing and entailed densification of value creation. The problem is that the Fabian elite managerial class immediately seized upon it as a policy choice worth around 20 years of climate mitigation. They primarily relied upon a system of thinly veiled climate measures to mask an approach almost completely based upon government force and coercion.
Quite apart from ruining the livelihood of farmers in the West, the darkest part of this agenda involves the poorest countries in the world. Our World in Data shows that the lion's share of increased synthetic fertiliser since the early sixties has happened in the world's LDCs. Much of the food grown in animal feed, an activity they would like to see significantly reduced given the deliberate mood shift to a plant-based diet. Their agenda would see 20-40% of GDP lost by some of the world's poorest countries. This isn't just the loss of productivity through the loss of fertilisers, it's the loss of markets through the deliberate attempt to stem and reverse the growth in animal farming by behavioural modification. All because they're in love with a romanticised viewpoint of traditional farming, which, back in the old days used to be called subsistence farming. They want the world's poorest countries to grow trees for free.
I'm not arguing that this approach is monolithic or the product of some dark conspiracy. But like most mass social evils, it is an evil perpetrated collectively by well-meaning people for a variety of motives. Distorting what people see as 'good' gives permission for all manner of evils perpetrated in the pursuit of noble aims.
Affluent societies can bear the cost of low productivity, provided they don't mind robbing some of their livelihood and exposing the poor to lower standards of living. The world's poorest societies have no such luxury. There, the costs of luxury beliefs are borne in shortened lives and deaths.
Bingo! Another reason the Global Cabal and the Banking, Investing industry loves to move the game pieces around the game board. The deforestation, (lumber crop) created via infernos in our Western states and Canada's Western provinces is part and parcel of the insane policies, resulting in higher housing costs, lumber jobs lost, and more citizens homeless, more destroyed lives, land and family livelihoods.
Rinse and repeat for nearly every industry and community in the Country. When those playing the game, get more power over the people, via Government policy, grift and Lobbying, the price of everything goes up and the quality of our health goes down, as in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Academia, Forestry, Energy policy, Agriculture, Healthcare, and on and on!
It's worth looking at public choice economics. There are two main ways which government can create situations in which the perverse interests of lobbying can morph into crony capitalism. The first is government overreach- through overregulation and barriers to entry government creates shortages in supply which moneyed interests can exploit and gamify. The biggest example in the West is housing costs. Around 60-80% of in excess of inflation house prices rises can be blamed directly or indirectly on government.
The second type is through dereliction of duty. For decades, most Western governments used a formula to determine budgets to protect people's property from natural disasters. This was a good deal for taxpayers because the money invested was less than either household insurance costs or the risk exposure from not being insured. The priorities changed. Terrorism, social spending and other budgets became greater priorities. At the same time, the dark green lunatics began preventing any of the incredibly benign forestry techniques which had kept forests relatively firesafe for decades. The type of crony capitalism which emerges in these types of circumstances is in many ways worse. It's best described as vulture capitalism.
Here's the result: clientism. Government is still the ringmaster, but suddenly it has an entirely different type of capitalist around which can work collusively with the aims of bad government. It's basically parasitism of a fundamentally unhealthy economic system which has been robbed of all the vigour and dynamism which comes from an economy being ground-up, innovative, and iterative, rather than the top-down clientism which overreaching government prefers. They are smart enough to avoid socialism overtly, but it's still state-led, top-down economics, 'man of systems', and still a recipe for impoverishment over the longer term.
Stop factory farming crop monoculture and the necessity for manufactured fertilizers drops. If done correctly, the need drops to zero. We will pay more for veggies that have flavor.
It’s a damn shame. Back here in the blue NYC suburbs, everything is owned by PE now. Almost impossible to find a family-owned business anymore. Needed a bat removal specialist recently. Had to go to the fourth page of Google search results to find an independent family-owned company.
Makes you wonder if selling out to private equity in Indiana was seen as a better (if less lucrative) option than selling out to private equity from China or Bill Gates.
Except...Grimmway's new owner (Teays River Investments) will likely do the "private equity thing" and suck them dry, THEN sell the company off to Bill Gates or a foreign-owned PE firm.
Teays River is based in an office suite in Carmel, IN; which is probably the wealthiest town in the state. Teays River's CEO is an attorney with a background that includes finance and working for government agencies -- not agriculture.
I have this vague feeling that we are slowly drifting into a modern version of Feudalism. Very Big Money is buying up more and more real estate (houses, farms, existing commercial / rental / industrial buildings, even developable raw land) with the intent of having corporations (owned by them) manage it all, for (of course) maximum profit. It puts teeth into the WEF mantra “own nothing and be happy”; and a twisted version of the phrase “rent-seeking”. Take away the traditional middle class path to financial security (marriage & a paid-off mortgage) and what happens come retirement.
Chris, excellent observations in the south end of the San Joaquin Valley’s fertile farmland for America. I’m familiar with Grimmway through Bolthouse Farms which became a lucrative, growth engine for juices and other consumer package goods. It’s been acquired more than once through PE deals as well. I’m pretty sure your take on it requiring a book length investigation into the forces driving PE purchases of formerly family owned ag enterprises is spot on - which applies as well to the implications. One major reason would appear to be the need for scale to cover the uncertainty and expenses of ever increasing regulations - not to mention the investments required to sustain and grow a competitive value chain from field to shelf. There’s no doubt that in the process we lose things of value that family ag enterprises historically brought to society and the economy especially at the local level.
It is probably similar in California but on steroids on how ranch’s and farmland gets sold in Texas is that developers will build around the ag zones land until it’s literally across the easement and then they will put pressure on the landowners by first making them start proving the land is being used or in a rotation schedule to the calendar else they start rezoning parts, or increasing the speculative value of the land so the landowner is priced out via taxes. Then the developer comes in to buy it on the cheap(reduced value of what it’s actually worth. ) then up goes another subdivision with 10000 homes in 100 acres type building. Utilities and infrastructure comes after the homes are built. Maybe…. Fire is pawned off to the volunteer stations as long as possible. Then they will incorporate the station and hire from within the union.
Silicon Valley is built on what was once known as the "Valley of the Hearts Delight". Beautiful fertile farmlands, covered with orchards, wheat fields and vegetables. Part of the area was the largest producers of prunes in the world! Now it is full of $3 million dollar postwar cracker box houses, next to McMansions, gridlocked freeways and pothole covered residential and business district streets. Pave paradise and put up high-density housing and homeless encampments!
A good read on the subject, though 20 years old this year, is Victor David Hansons book FIELDS WITHOUT DREAMS. The topic is well covered and left me feeling very sad. His family has owned land outside Fresno for generations and he takes us back to its beginning up to the (1996) present; still totally relevant today.
There are young people who want to farm. They may not be scions of a landowner, but they want to work the land. They are not idyllic, serious. These young folk have the interest, understanding, knowledge and courage. But not the cash the retiring landowners want/need. Ergo, land goes into manufacture, with transient labor, for ROI and low prices for us greedy consumers. I’m not dreaming. This culture still exists and is hanging by threads. Speaking of culture, farming has a double meaning. Read up on it, along with VDH. https://smallfarmersjournal.com/
private equity gets the local regulatory agency to tighten the screws around the necks of the local independent producers to the point where compliance renders their business unprofitable
so they sell out to a megalith with deep pockets which can afford to comply with regulation
innovation cannot exist within a universe of regulatory capture because the cost of compliance leaves no margin for it
As the owner of a small (120+ acres) now non-productive farm, I have a romantic attachment to the farming way of life. But is's a very low profit existence which requires high capital outlays for land and equipment. It's easy to understand upcoming generations not wanting to follow in their parents' footsteps. It feels sad to see big business step in, but there is little interest among private parties to step in, and even if there is interest, it's daunting to raise the capital necessary to get into the business.
Everywhere you turn, in practically every industry or business area now, you see that PE firms have ‘bought’ these businesses. You see it big time in the Modern Medical System and in the Modern Veterinary System. Smaller, independent solo or group ‘practices’ have been gobbled up by these PE firms. And the difference is palpable when you go there. These places are not the same as they were on your previous visits prior to PE takeovers.
This is particularly prevalent now in veterinary practices. I had a dog but she passed away in 2022. Then I inherited a cat but I’ve never take him to the vet. I have heard from a number of people that have been going to a vet for years, the vet sold the practice and retired. The practice was bought by a PE group, and the fees and what not increased dramatically but the level of care has gone down.
I think a lot of conservatives would sign on to, “we need to bar private equity and China from buying up farmland and homes,” while far fewer like the sound of, “the government should be able to tell Americans to whom they can and cannot sell their property, even if it means they may have to accept a lower price.” But in reality, the former implies the latter.
That has a nice ring to it and is likely true in the execution. However, the move to big government is the cause of much of our disease and reigning in the monopolies and the continued financialization of the economy will require some form of big government intervention. Which is why I don’t anticipate change.
Is private equity just the middleman? I can see people selling to a large farming corporation, which then sells it to a private equity firm who THEN sells it to China. I am completely ignorant on how this works.
We told our kids they were too good for farming, and they believed us. Families have no one to carry on the business. Government, especially nanny state governments destroy small business through taxation and regulation. Chemical farming is horrendously expensive and favors mega scale. The same forces decimated small businesses all over the country. Government hates small, independent business. Big business throws money to the pols and are easy to control. Is there a way back?
Carve-outs like the Butterfly example and local farms acquired by corporate farmers have been going on for 75 years. I have some personal experience on both sides of the equation. It's not all bad, and thus not all good. In the 1950s - 1980s, there were two paths for local farms--active family participation from generation to generation, or a foreclosure sale. Many farmers were destroyed by the British Imperial system, the commodities exchanges that prevented real price discovery due to manipulation.
Private equity, the two words that provoke either envy or disgust, provided another option for the patriarch/matriarch who saw the writing on the wall. With no family members interested in running the operation, why not sell and monetize generations of hard work? For those with an idyllic view of farming and ranching, they probably never witnessed firsthand the dysfunctionality (is that a word?) of sibling vs sibling over who is going to "run" the operation. Private equity managers are angels compared to those family squabbles, squabbles that ended up costing the family everything.
Also worth considering is third and fourth generation family members not especially interested in carrying on the family legacy in the ag business - and preferring instead to enjoy the accumulated wealth created when they sell out to PE firms or Big Food.
I hear this from ranchers -- next generations not wanting to pick up the work.
There is a small pre-Revolutionary War family farm near us producing delicious, reasonably priced grass fed beef. The current owner (Gen X) took over when his father died a couple of years back, but he said none of his kids want the farm, so it will end with him. So sad.
there are young farmers out there willing to take up land but they cannot compete with the big money trampling them to the gates. there ARE people who want to work and in particular want to do land stewardship. let that be known.
Wow that guy that runs that farm must be 7th-8th generation. That’s close to twice the typical generational longevity of any family owned venture. 4th-5th gen is normally when everything goes away. That’s sad his kids don’t want to be part of it.
Because it´s not job work. It´s life work. I did it for a while, and survived because the operation was heavily subsidized. By my wife. A doctor.
In California, the environmental overreach and regulations, coupled with uncertain water allotments make it easier to sell to corporate than live with the constant attacks from Politicians and Eco-Nazi's. Sadly, firmly suspect that the corporate farms are in cahoots with the Politicians. Land, water and mineral rights are usually the hidden quest in California.
You made my point bettet.
Sad but true
I saw a story on Ag Week this morning about how it was costing $1600 per acre in the Central Valley to comply with all the regulations out of Sacramento. And there’s a proposal that didn’t make it out of committee regulating nitrogen that would result in not enough N to even grow lettuce.
I have not seen a decent head of lettuce or bunch of celery in markets in over a year and wondered about it possibly being linked to the Nitrogen regulations. Add to that the push to rid the world of cattle and beef and is clear that ‘Environmentalism’ is literally going to be the death of us all.
Hungry people do some really outrageous things.
The fertilizer issue has been the subject of widespread farmer protests in Europe over the past few years. Impoverished soil = impoverished (and starving) people. That would up the chances of igniting the revolution…very Stalinesque.
It's not just nitrogen, there is a far darker agenda. A while back the Economist did a pretty good piece of research showing that higher yields were leading to rewilding for marginal farmlands. This natural economic process was a good thing and entailed densification of value creation. The problem is that the Fabian elite managerial class immediately seized upon it as a policy choice worth around 20 years of climate mitigation. They primarily relied upon a system of thinly veiled climate measures to mask an approach almost completely based upon government force and coercion.
Quite apart from ruining the livelihood of farmers in the West, the darkest part of this agenda involves the poorest countries in the world. Our World in Data shows that the lion's share of increased synthetic fertiliser since the early sixties has happened in the world's LDCs. Much of the food grown in animal feed, an activity they would like to see significantly reduced given the deliberate mood shift to a plant-based diet. Their agenda would see 20-40% of GDP lost by some of the world's poorest countries. This isn't just the loss of productivity through the loss of fertilisers, it's the loss of markets through the deliberate attempt to stem and reverse the growth in animal farming by behavioural modification. All because they're in love with a romanticised viewpoint of traditional farming, which, back in the old days used to be called subsistence farming. They want the world's poorest countries to grow trees for free.
I'm not arguing that this approach is monolithic or the product of some dark conspiracy. But like most mass social evils, it is an evil perpetrated collectively by well-meaning people for a variety of motives. Distorting what people see as 'good' gives permission for all manner of evils perpetrated in the pursuit of noble aims.
Affluent societies can bear the cost of low productivity, provided they don't mind robbing some of their livelihood and exposing the poor to lower standards of living. The world's poorest societies have no such luxury. There, the costs of luxury beliefs are borne in shortened lives and deaths.
Bingo! Another reason the Global Cabal and the Banking, Investing industry loves to move the game pieces around the game board. The deforestation, (lumber crop) created via infernos in our Western states and Canada's Western provinces is part and parcel of the insane policies, resulting in higher housing costs, lumber jobs lost, and more citizens homeless, more destroyed lives, land and family livelihoods.
Rinse and repeat for nearly every industry and community in the Country. When those playing the game, get more power over the people, via Government policy, grift and Lobbying, the price of everything goes up and the quality of our health goes down, as in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Academia, Forestry, Energy policy, Agriculture, Healthcare, and on and on!
It's worth looking at public choice economics. There are two main ways which government can create situations in which the perverse interests of lobbying can morph into crony capitalism. The first is government overreach- through overregulation and barriers to entry government creates shortages in supply which moneyed interests can exploit and gamify. The biggest example in the West is housing costs. Around 60-80% of in excess of inflation house prices rises can be blamed directly or indirectly on government.
The second type is through dereliction of duty. For decades, most Western governments used a formula to determine budgets to protect people's property from natural disasters. This was a good deal for taxpayers because the money invested was less than either household insurance costs or the risk exposure from not being insured. The priorities changed. Terrorism, social spending and other budgets became greater priorities. At the same time, the dark green lunatics began preventing any of the incredibly benign forestry techniques which had kept forests relatively firesafe for decades. The type of crony capitalism which emerges in these types of circumstances is in many ways worse. It's best described as vulture capitalism.
Here's the result: clientism. Government is still the ringmaster, but suddenly it has an entirely different type of capitalist around which can work collusively with the aims of bad government. It's basically parasitism of a fundamentally unhealthy economic system which has been robbed of all the vigour and dynamism which comes from an economy being ground-up, innovative, and iterative, rather than the top-down clientism which overreaching government prefers. They are smart enough to avoid socialism overtly, but it's still state-led, top-down economics, 'man of systems', and still a recipe for impoverishment over the longer term.
Never thought of that but it does seem like they want to ignite something.
Stop factory farming crop monoculture and the necessity for manufactured fertilizers drops. If done correctly, the need drops to zero. We will pay more for veggies that have flavor.
Even the strongest ship can’t survive a helmsman intentionally steering it onto the rocks.
You will own nothing and you will be happy.
California proving ground.
It’s a damn shame. Back here in the blue NYC suburbs, everything is owned by PE now. Almost impossible to find a family-owned business anymore. Needed a bat removal specialist recently. Had to go to the fourth page of Google search results to find an independent family-owned company.
a bat removal company???????????// 4 pages of bat removal companies????????
really???????????/
Makes you wonder if selling out to private equity in Indiana was seen as a better (if less lucrative) option than selling out to private equity from China or Bill Gates.
Except...Grimmway's new owner (Teays River Investments) will likely do the "private equity thing" and suck them dry, THEN sell the company off to Bill Gates or a foreign-owned PE firm.
Teays River is based in an office suite in Carmel, IN; which is probably the wealthiest town in the state. Teays River's CEO is an attorney with a background that includes finance and working for government agencies -- not agriculture.
indiana private equity may well be a front group for gates or china. or the mexican cartels
I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but there sure are a lot of Insurance companies based in Indiana.
I have this vague feeling that we are slowly drifting into a modern version of Feudalism. Very Big Money is buying up more and more real estate (houses, farms, existing commercial / rental / industrial buildings, even developable raw land) with the intent of having corporations (owned by them) manage it all, for (of course) maximum profit. It puts teeth into the WEF mantra “own nothing and be happy”; and a twisted version of the phrase “rent-seeking”. Take away the traditional middle class path to financial security (marriage & a paid-off mortgage) and what happens come retirement.
All the noblesse, none of the oblige.
Chris, excellent observations in the south end of the San Joaquin Valley’s fertile farmland for America. I’m familiar with Grimmway through Bolthouse Farms which became a lucrative, growth engine for juices and other consumer package goods. It’s been acquired more than once through PE deals as well. I’m pretty sure your take on it requiring a book length investigation into the forces driving PE purchases of formerly family owned ag enterprises is spot on - which applies as well to the implications. One major reason would appear to be the need for scale to cover the uncertainty and expenses of ever increasing regulations - not to mention the investments required to sustain and grow a competitive value chain from field to shelf. There’s no doubt that in the process we lose things of value that family ag enterprises historically brought to society and the economy especially at the local level.
Read Victor Davis Hanson’s book Fields Without Dreams. Totally on topic and a really good read.
It is probably similar in California but on steroids on how ranch’s and farmland gets sold in Texas is that developers will build around the ag zones land until it’s literally across the easement and then they will put pressure on the landowners by first making them start proving the land is being used or in a rotation schedule to the calendar else they start rezoning parts, or increasing the speculative value of the land so the landowner is priced out via taxes. Then the developer comes in to buy it on the cheap(reduced value of what it’s actually worth. ) then up goes another subdivision with 10000 homes in 100 acres type building. Utilities and infrastructure comes after the homes are built. Maybe…. Fire is pawned off to the volunteer stations as long as possible. Then they will incorporate the station and hire from within the union.
Silicon Valley is built on what was once known as the "Valley of the Hearts Delight". Beautiful fertile farmlands, covered with orchards, wheat fields and vegetables. Part of the area was the largest producers of prunes in the world! Now it is full of $3 million dollar postwar cracker box houses, next to McMansions, gridlocked freeways and pothole covered residential and business district streets. Pave paradise and put up high-density housing and homeless encampments!
A good read on the subject, though 20 years old this year, is Victor David Hansons book FIELDS WITHOUT DREAMS. The topic is well covered and left me feeling very sad. His family has owned land outside Fresno for generations and he takes us back to its beginning up to the (1996) present; still totally relevant today.
There are young people who want to farm. They may not be scions of a landowner, but they want to work the land. They are not idyllic, serious. These young folk have the interest, understanding, knowledge and courage. But not the cash the retiring landowners want/need. Ergo, land goes into manufacture, with transient labor, for ROI and low prices for us greedy consumers. I’m not dreaming. This culture still exists and is hanging by threads. Speaking of culture, farming has a double meaning. Read up on it, along with VDH. https://smallfarmersjournal.com/
He talks a lot about his family origins on his podcast. VDH is fascinating to listen to on any subject.
Yes he is; and wise.
it's very simple actually
private equity gets the local regulatory agency to tighten the screws around the necks of the local independent producers to the point where compliance renders their business unprofitable
so they sell out to a megalith with deep pockets which can afford to comply with regulation
innovation cannot exist within a universe of regulatory capture because the cost of compliance leaves no margin for it
just your classic communist lose-lose situation
"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." ~ Benito Mussolini
The Democrats understand and approve. The State uber alles.
As the owner of a small (120+ acres) now non-productive farm, I have a romantic attachment to the farming way of life. But is's a very low profit existence which requires high capital outlays for land and equipment. It's easy to understand upcoming generations not wanting to follow in their parents' footsteps. It feels sad to see big business step in, but there is little interest among private parties to step in, and even if there is interest, it's daunting to raise the capital necessary to get into the business.
Everywhere you turn, in practically every industry or business area now, you see that PE firms have ‘bought’ these businesses. You see it big time in the Modern Medical System and in the Modern Veterinary System. Smaller, independent solo or group ‘practices’ have been gobbled up by these PE firms. And the difference is palpable when you go there. These places are not the same as they were on your previous visits prior to PE takeovers.
100%
And then you witness massive price increases from the PE-owned clinics once they control a market.
Kinda predictable, frankly. The rich get richer at the expense of everyone else.
This is particularly prevalent now in veterinary practices. I had a dog but she passed away in 2022. Then I inherited a cat but I’ve never take him to the vet. I have heard from a number of people that have been going to a vet for years, the vet sold the practice and retired. The practice was bought by a PE group, and the fees and what not increased dramatically but the level of care has gone down.
Exactly predictable.
And more pushing of pharma products, vaxes, etc.
Makes me wonder where our food will come from in the near future. Soylent Green, anyone?
'Solyent Green is unemployed actors!'
The FDA will have to start an AIDS testing program for meat.
One of the great benefits of AI. No need for arrogant know it all actors. I've been waiting for this day.
Take down the Hollywood sign and burn it. Actors will reside in data centers in the Midwest. Wooo Hooo!
I think a lot of conservatives would sign on to, “we need to bar private equity and China from buying up farmland and homes,” while far fewer like the sound of, “the government should be able to tell Americans to whom they can and cannot sell their property, even if it means they may have to accept a lower price.” But in reality, the former implies the latter.
We can't solve big government problems with big government solutions.
That has a nice ring to it and is likely true in the execution. However, the move to big government is the cause of much of our disease and reigning in the monopolies and the continued financialization of the economy will require some form of big government intervention. Which is why I don’t anticipate change.
Is private equity just the middleman? I can see people selling to a large farming corporation, which then sells it to a private equity firm who THEN sells it to China. I am completely ignorant on how this works.
We told our kids they were too good for farming, and they believed us. Families have no one to carry on the business. Government, especially nanny state governments destroy small business through taxation and regulation. Chemical farming is horrendously expensive and favors mega scale. The same forces decimated small businesses all over the country. Government hates small, independent business. Big business throws money to the pols and are easy to control. Is there a way back?
Carve-outs like the Butterfly example and local farms acquired by corporate farmers have been going on for 75 years. I have some personal experience on both sides of the equation. It's not all bad, and thus not all good. In the 1950s - 1980s, there were two paths for local farms--active family participation from generation to generation, or a foreclosure sale. Many farmers were destroyed by the British Imperial system, the commodities exchanges that prevented real price discovery due to manipulation.
Private equity, the two words that provoke either envy or disgust, provided another option for the patriarch/matriarch who saw the writing on the wall. With no family members interested in running the operation, why not sell and monetize generations of hard work? For those with an idyllic view of farming and ranching, they probably never witnessed firsthand the dysfunctionality (is that a word?) of sibling vs sibling over who is going to "run" the operation. Private equity managers are angels compared to those family squabbles, squabbles that ended up costing the family everything.
I see this argument completely, but it still leads to changes in local culture.
Agreed.
Good comment. "Shirt-sleve to Shirt-sleve in 3 generations."
2 incompetent squabbling brothers can easily destroy all of Granddad's work in 20 years.