The New York Times, the Establishment’s “Paper of Record,” is certainly not OCA’s favorite newspaper. But occasionally the NYT has a good article, such as the following.
Peter Coy writes:
“Farmland L.P., [is] an investment fund that buys farmland and readies it for certification as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: using [natural] pesticides sparingly, and only the least harmful kinds; minimizing erosion; sequestering carbon in the soil; rotating crops regularly and providing habitats for butterflies, bees and other pollinators. Some organic farmers use lady bugs to eat aphids and owls to eat rodents.
Wall Street isn’t always a friend of the land: Pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors that have begun to acquire U.S. farmland have not in general focused on regeneration. By focusing single-mindedly on maximizing crop yields, “they continue to degrade the underlying assets that they should be improving or at least stabilizing,” David LeZaks, a senior fellow at the Croatan Institute in Durham, N.C., told me.
Even when farmers own the land, as is more often the case, the government-subsidized crop insurance system incentivizes them to stick with one crop — typically industrial corn or soybeans — and make heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. ‘Since insurance companies must pay farmers when they lose crops due to extreme weather, farmers with crop insurance see no upside in using practices that can support the resilience of cropland against extreme weather events,’ according to a report by the Conservation Finance Network…
Companies such as Farmland are thinking further ahead while still keeping financial principles and profit in mind…”