A couple of things caught my eye this week. One of them was a bumper sticker that read: "How can ours be a free country if it's all for sale?"  The other was an item over at Agriculture.com about how the government of Brazil is starting to put severe restrictions on foreign ownership of farmlands in that country.

Issue of the disappearing rain forests aside, there has been a virtual land rush by foreign investors to buy up Brazil's agricultural resources – and responding to some genuine concerns about this state of affairs, Brazil's Agrarian Development Minister (roughly analogous to our Secretary of Agriculture) has announced the government's intention to "tighten restrictions on foreign ownership of farmlands." This is actually going to require an amendment to the Brazilian constitution however – which if you know anything about constitutional law, is no small thing – and the details as to how and when such restrictions will go into effect are a bit sketchy at this point.

Now, we know that a whole lot of U.S. infrastructure – our roads and toll bridges, power generation facilities, natural resources and more – have been sold off to foreign corporations in recent years, and it's stirring up some real resentment among ordinary Americans – as well it should. However, what's been happening to American farmland is a lot less clear.

Just for kicks and giggles, I did a few quick Internet searches on "foreign ownership of U.S. farmland." What I found was that the issue was of great concern about thirty-five years ago, but that a relatively small percentage of U.S. farmland was actually held by foreign corporations and investors. Back in the 1970s, several states passed their own legislation, prohibiting and even outlawing foreign ownership of local agrarian lands. However, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the issue of foreign ownership of U.S. farmlands was a relatively minor one, and the state laws that were in effect hadn't had much effect.

By 1987, foreign corporations and investors owned about 12.5 million acres of U.S. farmland – which still represented less than 1% of all privately held agricultural property in this country. To be sure, American land is still a heck of a bargain compared to land prices in Europe and Japan, and despite all the ballyhoo about taxes, corporations operating in the U.S. have some of the lowest tax burdens in the world (which is why you and I as working human citizens wind up having to pick up the slack – but I digress...)

Here's what I found a bit disturbing however. All the information that was close at hand was at least 20 years out of date. At the moment, I'm having a devil of a time trying to find current data on the topic of foreign ownership of U.S. farms. It's probably out there, but it's obvious that for whatever reason, I'm going to have to dig a lot deeper to find out just how much of our American farmland has been handed over to foreign interests.

Hopefully, it isn't much...stay tuned...