Part 4: US Farmland Real Estate Trends

Today marks the conclusion of a four-part series with Farmers National Company, focusing on agricultural land and real estate trends. Senior Vice President of Real Estate Operations, Paul Shadegg sheds more light into what is going on with foreign ownership and investment in US ag land.

“Foreign ownership of land is (is) less than than 3% (at) 2.7%. And then when we break that down even farther, you know, China is the one that's in the news. And I can tell you that China is the biggest investor is Canada. And then there's some European countries that fall in there. But China is less than 1%.”

He says concerns with foreign ownership are real and valid. However, it does help to have the perspective of ally versus adversary.

“And I think that's something good to have on the radar that (you) you look at that and say, well, if our investment in agriculture should be US based, and of course, you know, China being an adversary, we really want to watch our adversaries. The argument I have we have a conversation with a gentleman who's lived in the United States for many years from England, and he said, you know, we're allies. So why would you want to slow me down from buying land to investing in farmland? And there's an argument there ally versus adversary, but we certainly want to be careful with our adversaries.”

Paul Schadegg with National Farmers company.