We will end this week's discussion of financial public policy tied to FARMLAND REITS-----having spent the week focused largely on the goals of these REITS in how they effect REAL ESTATE consolidation mirroring the subprime mortgage loan frauds directed at all US city homeowner real estate transference to global banking in bankruptcies and reverse loans for seniors.
Today we will bring REITS as tax evasion policies for corporations ------these policies installed during EISENHOWER era----having moved all property tax burden from corporations-----then global corporations to our 99% of WE THE PEOPLE through our pensions, 401Ks and local and state bond issues. When our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE think we are receiving DIVIDENDS from these muni-fund and private investment firm stocks and bonds---they are not understanding any amount in dividend is doubly lost in higher and higher and higher taxation and loss of value in pensions and 401Ks.
Here we see Obama era property taxes soared because US Treasury and state municipal bond frauds required higher taxes on our 99% to pay those REITS---FARMLAND REITS.
“I hear a lot of, ‘It’s your fault for not saving enough,’” said Aleta Crowe, whose family farms about 2,500 acres of grain crops in southwestern Indiana'.
This is what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and global banking 1% told our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE after massive systemic Federal agency and public trust frauds killed all our SAVINGS----YOU DIDN'T SAVE ENOUGH.
While national media and 5% global banking NGOS tell us all these taxes are created for social benefit ----social welfare----to fund pensions or Social Security and disability------it is all being funneled to support REITS----now FARMLAND REITS and yes, our 99% of small and regional farmers WILL LOSE THEIR LAND. MANY of our small and regional farmers are RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS-----and it is the right wing economics that kill REAL domestic free market economies open to all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens.
U.S. farmers fret as property taxes soar amid souring incomes
P.J. Huffstutter5 Min Read
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Collapsing prices for U.S. corn and soybeans have made it harder for some farmers to pay their property taxes, at a time when these tax bills are soaring and the rate of farm bankruptcies is growing.
Over the past three years, farmland property taxes have jumped as much as 400 percent in parts of the United States, according to state and federal government data. One farmer in Ohio said his property tax bill has skyrocketed to more than $100 an acre from less than $20 seven years ago.
Farmers say the problem, in many cases, is rooted in the reversal in the grain market. They now are scrambling to come up with the money to pay tax bills based heavily on incomes they enjoyed when crop prices were booming in 2012.
Back then, their taxes were much less because they were based partly on previous years when crop prices were lower.
Now farm incomes are falling due to cooling export demand and plummeting grain prices. In the Midwest, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings in the first quarter of 2016 soared 60 percent from the same period in 2013, according to court data. In the nation as a whole, Chapter 12 filings are up 18 percent over the same period.
“I hear a lot of, ‘It’s your fault for not saving enough,’” said Aleta Crowe, whose family farms about 2,500 acres of grain crops in southwestern Indiana. “If your property taxes doubled or tripled, would you have thought a few years ago to save money for taxes?”
APPRAISALS
Farmland is typically appraised at rates below true market value to keep levies affordable for farmers. In addition, many Midwestern states base farmland appraisals on a formula of current agricultural use value (CAUV), or the income a farmer can expect to earn, based on factors including commodity grain prices, farm rental rates, production expenses and interest rates.
These often use a rolling average aimed at balancing volatile swings in crop prices. But farmers say the formula was skewed by the historic rollercoaster ride taken by grain prices and farm incomes from 2010 to 2015.
Record-high crop prices in 2012, and all-time-high farm incomes in 2013, are now factoring in to property tax appraisals in some states. Meanwhile farm incomes plummeted 27 percent in 2014 from the year earlier and likely by another 38 percent in 2015, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts.
Midwestern farmers and ranchers have lobbied local and state lawmakers in Nebraska, Ohio and elsewhere for relief since grain prices began to fall off 2012 peaks, but have seen only modest legislative movement. Critics say farmers benefited from property tax breaks for decades and should have been better prepared.
The farming community did get some relief in Indiana, which enacted a law this spring to shift more than $100 million in tax burden off farmers by 2019.
STRAIN SEEN
Still, the economic strain is setting in.
Ceres Partners, a Indiana-based firm that handles a farmland fund with nearly $500 million in assets, has seen taxes squeeze its margins. The fund’s farmlands saw average property taxes jumped nearly 56 percent per acre in Indiana and 170 percent in Ohio between 2013 and 2015, said Brandon Zick, director of acquisitions and portfolio management.
Taxes are also stalling land deals. Farmland Partners Inc, a farmland real estate investment trust (REIT) with approximately $600 million in farmland assets, has dropped out of deals in Ohio and Nebraska over the past year because property taxes were too onerous.
“You look at the taxes and you think, ‘Holy cow, we can’t buy that farm’,” said Chief Executive Officer Paul Pittman. “We would be doing more deals in Nebraska if the property taxes weren’t so high and unpredictable.”
LAWYERING UP
The disconnect between taxes and revenue had people like Ohio corn farmer Bruce Kettelle trying to use every possible inch of his 200 acres to boost income this season.
If the weather holds, he expects his profit to be a little over $100 per acre. The tax bill due this autumn could be as much as $105 per acre.
Seven years ago, Kettelle said, his farm’s profit was $205 an acre - with a tax bill of $19.50 per acre.
“The formula now is trying to catch up with us, but it’s never been tested at the levels of profits we saw” in recent years, said Kettelle, whose farm has been in his family since the 1870s. “I’m a frugal farmer. And I don’t know how I’m going to survive this.”
Such fears have prompted a group of farmers and landowners to sue Ohio, claiming farmland owners were overcharged billions of dollars in property taxes. According to the state court filing, the average current agricultural use value tax collections from 2005 to 2013 jumped 374 percent, from $1.8 billion a year to $6.8 billion a year.
The case is expected to go to trial next year. Ohio state taxation officials declined to comment on the case.
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While global banking 1% fool our 99% of right wing voters saying END THE ESTATE TAX will solve growing taxation problems-----IT IS THE OPPOSITE. When today's FARM BILL ends all that far-right wing subsidy paying farmers not to farm-----paying farmers to grow only this crop or that crop-----pushing farmers into the stock market for crop insurance-----our 99% of US small and regional farmers will be great big losers----while FARMLAND REITS pay the property taxes for the largest of GLOBAL BIG AG corporations. Those small and regional farmers are now paying the property taxes for those industrial global farms.
What happens when we allow that ESTATE TAX to be killed? The ESTATE TAX was installed to keep global 1% massive land acquisitions from staying in place from one generation to another---it was not meant to target our small and regional farmers-----that transition happened as EISENHOWER REITS removed taxation of corporations. What is happening today is this----collectivized land to global big AG and US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories will all be paid for by higher and higher taxes on 99% of WE THE PEOPLE. These rising taxes have only just begun as all of what is today's US WORKER WAGES AND SALARIES ----will be called TAXES.
Farmland taxes increasing on real estate bill
Farmland owners will soon receive their tax bills in the mail and will most likely notice a slight bump in their assessment of property value.
The increase in farmland taxes will be decided by the land's productivity index. The productivity index determines the quality of the soil, according to Jessica Grammer, manager at the Jackson County Farm Bureau.
In Southern Illinois, the productivity index ranges from about 90 to about 100, which is the lower end of the scale. In central Illinois, many farmlands have an index rating in the 120s. According to the Illinois Farm Bureau, the lowest average index rating in Illinois is 90 in Johnson County and 125 in De Witt and Piatt Counties in central Illinois.
Currently, farmland with a 90 productivity index rating has a certified value of $74.73 per acre, and the land with an index rating of 125 is worth $522.88 per acre, according to values from the Farmland Assessment Technical Advisory Board.
The changes started in 2013 when the Illinois Department of Revenue introduced legislation that made a change to how farmland’s assessed values are determined. According to the farm bureau, the goal of taxing farmland based on the land’s use was to prevent urban sprawl and inflation from decimating agriculture in Illinois. It also provided statewide uniformity of assessed values on soils across the state.
The 1986 amendment to the Farmland Assessment Law limited the change in farmland assessments for each productivity index to 10 percent a year. The new Farmland Assessment Law shows the wide gap between the certified values and the values actually produced by the farmland assessment formula and farmland is taxed based on its certified value. The idea was to produce values of farmland ranging from a 2:1 ratio between the lowest index rating and the highest.
Grammer said there is a very high ratio at the moment – closer to 42:1.
The legislation is designed to bring it back to a 3:1, according to the Farm Bureau. The median index rating in Illinois is at 111. The calculated values on lower indexes will increase at a faster rate, while properties with a higher index will increase at a slower rate to bridge the gap.
Williamson County Commissioner Ron Ellis said based on his calculations, farmland with index rating of 91 will see a 37 percent increase in year one on property taxes and a 77 percent increase in year two. Farmland in central Illinois with a 111 index will see about a 10 percent increase, and then a 21 percent increase in the second year, he said.
For those with an index rating of 121, those owners will see a 6 percent increase in year one and then a 12 percent increase in year two, according to Ellis.
Williamson County Farmer Jim Anderson says he feels like Southern Illinois is getting the short end of the stick.
He said farmers in the northern part of the state have a better quality of soil and they should be paying more because they make more money from their land.
“Their soil is a higher quality, so they can sell it at a higher prices,” Anderson said. “With the exception of land costs, we have the same expenses in equipment … and time.”
As an example, Anderson said, if it costs $400 to plan an acres of corn which products 150 bushels, and at $4 a bushel it takes 100 bushels to break even and then he would have 50 additional bushels to make money. In central Illinois, he said the same land could produce 250 bushels an acre, but after breaking even, that northern farmer will have more bushels to make money.
The Farm Bureau said it will take an estimated 15 to 20 years for the assess values of the productivity indexes to reach their calculated value under the formula.
Ellis said real estate bills should have started to be mailed this weekend.
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Here we look locally at MARYLAND EASTERN SHORE. For these few decades REAL left social progressives have shouted against these global BIG MEAT BIG AG sold as creating JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Currently these farms are now transferring into regional meat with ranchers simply being sharecroppers to global corporations. First our Maryland Eastern Shore small farmers were killed and made sharecroppers to global BIG AG----these few decades have made the same of our small and regional ranchers. All of the above were able to exist because of FARM BILL subsidies, crop insurance, and stock market commodities dividends. Well, all that is disappearing for small and regional ranchers and farmers-----only the global BIG MEAT AND BIG AG are getting those REIT property tax evasions.
What is happening on our Maryland Eastern Shore as well is a complete loss of fresh water aquifers. All those global BIG AG TOMATOES----sent all over the world is leaving our Eastern Shore will no fresh water options. Cannot have even BIG MEAT and BIG AG with no fresh water access. What is MOVING FORWARD on Maryland and Virginia Eastern Shore?
OFFSHORE MASSIVE SEAFOOD PLATFORMS-----MASSIVE OIL AND NATURAL GAS PLATFORMS----AND LOTS OF GLOBAL REFINERIES.
Below we see Maryland raging global banking 5% Clinton neo-liberal MADELENO----and fellow global banking 5% player ROBBYN LEWIS pretending they are passing environmental policies when SAVE THE CHEASAPEAKE BAY is killed with MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS BALTIMORE MADE A GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PORT. There has been no REAL left social progressive GREEN policies in Maryland especially as regards SAVE THE BAY. Those FAKE GREEN NGOs with 5% global banking players are lying about the quality of water, wetlands, and our coastal land.
'That’s why Food & Water Watch is working with these community partners, as well as Senator Rich Madaleno and Delegate Robbyn Lewis to introduce the Community Healthy Air Act in Annapolis this January'.
Maryland Assembly is top gun on pushing not only FARMLAND REITS----REITS of all kinds killing our 99% of Maryland citizens with high taxes then they claim it is all that social benefit and social welfare----NO, IT IS CORPORATE WELFARE thanks to Maryland Assembly global banking 1% Bush neo-cons and Clinton neo-liberals----O'MALLEY TAG TEAM WITH HOGAN.
There is NO plan for traditional families on Maryland Eastern Shore.
Traditional Family Agriculture to Corporate Industry
Years of weak environmental regulations, bad farm policy and corporate power have resulted in the explosion of destructive factory farms in Maryland
We all need safe food and clean water.
By Meg Robbins
“Why’d the chicken cross the road? … For better opportunities!” This joke received huge laughs last weekend at the annual Factory Farm Summit hosted by Socially Responsible Agricultural Project in Ocean City, Maryland. Activists, farmers, and frontline community members from across the country came together to share stories, trainings, and the clear message that factory farms cannot be in our future! I left both horrified with the power of the poultry industry in Maryland and reinvigorated to fight for healthy and sustainable agriculture practices.
I grew up in Maryland, so I am not new to the sight of driving past huge trucks filled with hundreds of chickens stacked in cages. But what I had not realized was the extent that massive factory farms have been popping up right next to neighborhoods on the Eastern Shore with zero consent from nearby homeowners.
I joined community members on a tour of farms in Somerset and Wicomico Counties, and I was shocked to see massive chicken houses right next to roads, homes, and schools. I learned these chicken houses will hold a quarter of a million birds per year, and there were often up to 10 houses in a row right next to the road; that’s almost 2.5 million birds per year on just one farm.
One neighbor of these massive factory farms, Lisa, told me about the horrors of living here. “When you step outside, the smell is unbearable. It gets in your clothes and in your nose, we can’t open the windows in the summer because of the stench.” But the issues go far past just smell.
There are dozens of chemicals in manure, most of which are air pollutants and most of which infiltrated into surrounding homes.
“I have to take allergy medicine everyday, and [my husband] has bronchitis now. This never used to happen to us.”
Lisa takes care of a small farm that is currently threatened by these chicken factories. The property has been in her family since the 1600’s, so she has no intention of moving despite growing health concerns. For her, moving isn’t even a viable option, since property values plummet the minute 2.5 million chickens move in next door.
“This is not agriculture, this is industry.”
The farmers running these factory chicken farms contract with mega-poultry corporations. These corporate “integrators” own the birds, provide the feed, and often require expensive upgrades to chicken houses which force farmers to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
For the past several decades bad farm policy has made maintaining a small, diversified family farm exceedingly difficult, and many farmers who contract with Perdue or Sanderson Farms or other integrators do so because they see few other options to save their farms.
As we pick up our banners for change, we are not anti-farmer, or anti-poultry. We are anti-factory farm!
On the factory farm tour, Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP) and others made sure not to vilify the farmers-- rather, the explosion of factory farms on Maryland’s eastern shore is a result of bad farm policy, corporate power and consolidation in the poultry industry, and weak environmental regulations.
Corporate integrators pit farmers against one another through the tournament system, whereby the top performing growers receive higher pay-- which comes from paying the lower performing growers less. The problem is that the corporate integrator can influence which farms produce bigger and better birds by controlling the quality of chicks that are shipped to those farms. Integrators use this system to punish growers for speaking out or for refusing to make expensive upgrades.
According to Dr. John Ikerd of University of Missouri, this system was set up intentionally to disrupt the traditional farming culture and community where neighbors would help each other and work together on their farms.
The end result is neighbor versus neighbor. When farmer income is based on how they produce in comparison to their neighbors, there is a huge wedge in any mobilization effort for a unified movement to stand up against the industry.
So as we pick up our banners for change, we are not anti-farmer, or anti-poultry. We are anti-factory farm!
Chief Dennis Coker of the Lenape tribe of Delaware shared that they have a tradition to consciously preserve our environment so that our descendants seven generations from now will thrive on our land. Right now, we are failing on this mission. But, there are community members saying enough is enough.
When community members risked their safety to speak out against these massive poultry players and ask their local government for help, they were met with skepticism, denial, and lack of action.
That’s why Food & Water Watch is working with these community partners, as well as Senator Rich Madaleno and Delegate Robbyn Lewis to introduce the Community Healthy Air Act in Annapolis this January.
THESE ARE THE SAME ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% PLAYER FAKE GREEN ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS AS ALL OF THESE FEW DECADES.
The Community Healthy Air Act will require the Maryland Department of the Environment to collect air quality and public health data from factory farms and to assess public health risks. This legislation is necessary to make sure that rural communities in Maryland are not left behind to suffer from asthma, lung disease, and cancer just so that we can have endless chicken on our plates.
We need the whole state of Maryland to recognize what is happening on the Eastern Shore and to speak up in support of the Community Healthy Air Act.
Sign our petition to your state representatives today and ask them to support the Community Healthy Air Act so we don’t value poultry profits over the health and safety of communities in Maryland!
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Each US state has these economic development committees ------here we see Maryland TASK FORCE with all kinds of departments each with offices on Maryland Eastern Shore dealing with small farmers----small business watermen------small ranchers-----all tied into our Maryland Eastern Shore job training, public transportation, environmental public health.
When we allow our state assemblies to be controlled with global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS pols as Maryland has these few decades----we have state agencies not working to protect 99% of Maryland Eastern Shore citizens---they are working to install MOVING FORWARD global oil and gas corporations, refineries, and offshore seafood platforms all owned by foreign global corporations---all not having any intention of hiring our Maryland 99% of Eastern Shore citizens and certainly not caring about environment or public health.
What these global corporations being installed on Maryland Eastern Shore do want is NOT TO PAY ANY TAXES----they want that land designated as REIT---FARMLAND REIT and will demand 99% of Eastern Maryland citizens pay higher and higher taxes.
WHEN TAXATION ON OUR US 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE BECOMES TO HIGH---OUR WAGES AND SALARIES BECOME TAXES AND WE ARE NOT PAID TO WORK.
All of these state appointed people to these agencies are 5% global banking players. They have positions paying them well today----not caring to where MOVING FORWARD will take their families tomorrow. All of these MARYLAND 5% freemason/Greek global banking players know MOVING FORWARD is GREAT LEAP FORWARD is far-right wing authoritarian brutal Stalin/Mao collectivizing all Maryland land with every intent towards weapon of mass starvation.
Seems like the CHAIR of this group is very tied to OIL CORPORATIONS.
GOVERNOR'S TASK FORCE ON EASTERN SHORE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
William R. Ecker, Chair (chosen by Governor)Contact: Vernon J. Thompson
c/o Division of Regional Development
Dept. of Business & Economic Development
217 East Redwood St., Baltimore, MD 21202 - 3316
(410) 767-0082; fax: (410) 333-1836
e-mail: vthompson@mdbusiness.state.md.us
Under the One Maryland economic development program for distressed counties, the Smart Growth Economic Development Infrastucture Fund was established in 1999 to assist qualified economically distressed counties (Chapter 304, Acts of 1999). To further that program, in December 1999, the Governor authorized the Governor's Task Force on Eastern Shore Economic Development (Executive Order 01.01.1999.36). The Task Force considered issues and obstacles in developing smart growth strategies for the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with special emphasis on Caroline, Dorchester, Somerset and Worcester counties.
The Task Force submitted a report to the Governor and General Assembly on January 9, 2001. In that report, the Task Force recommended that two permanent regional planning councils be established. Thereafter, the Tri-County Council for the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Mid-Shore Regional Council were created in 2001 (Chapters 527 & 528, Acts of 2001).
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
GOVERNOR'S TASK FORCE ON EASTERN SHORE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT William R. Ecker, Chair (chosen by Governor)
Appointed by Governor: Hal Adkins; George R. Ames, Jr.; Jon M. Andes, Ed.D.; Ruth Baker; Edward G. Banks, Jr., Esq.; James Barrett; Steven Baxter; Robert Behlke; J. Spicer Bell, Ed.D.; Walter F. Bell, Jr.; Don Wm. Bradley; Jack Brooks; Catherine A. Brown; David Bruning; Honiss W. Cane; W. R. (Nick) Carter; Betty B. Causey; Charles C. Cawley; David Clark; John B. Comeau; Jane R. Conlin; LaMonte E. Cooke; Lorraine A. Costella, Ph.D.; Tom Crawford; W. Lee Denny; Suzan Doordan; Glen Evans; Don Ewalt; Thomas A. Flowers, Ed.D.; Ronald G. Forsythe; Julia E. Foxwell; C. Ronald Franks; Caren L. French; Ed Fry; John General; Deborah R. Goeller; Gladys Goslee; Paulette P. Green; Rev. Leon Hall; Roger L. Harrell; Donald Hastings; Patrick Henry; Philip W. Hoon, Esq.; Julie M. Horner; Terri B. Jackson; Jean D. Johnson; Rebecca F. Loukides; Jeanne Lynch; William C. Malkus; Charles E. Massey; James N. Mathias, Jr.; Keith McMahan; Wayne A. Mills; Phyllis Rice Mitchell; Frederick W. (Rick) Nelson, Jr.; Jay L. Newcomb; James R. Nooney; G. Ray Nordstrom; Colleen K. Parrot; Richard Passwater; Franklin W. Prettyman; Gerald Redden; Edwin G. Richards; Roger Richardson; Carl D. Roberts, Ed.D.; Winifred Roche-Smith; George A. Sands, Jr.; D. J. (Duke) Shannahan; Susan C. Simmons; John Dale Smack; Edward C. Soutiere; Robert Spedden; Frederick E. Spence; Helen M. Spinelli; Dereith L. Sutton; John Shelton Sydnor; Jay W. Tawes; Jack Thomas; Michael D. Thomas, Ed.D.; Danny Thompson; Jeffrey F. Turner; John Valliant; Carl Widdowson; Douglas H. Wilson; Steven C. Wilson; Pam Wingate; Bill Wise III; H. K. Norman Wolske; David J. Wooten.
Appointed by Task Force Chair:
Nelson K. Bolender; Marlene F. Davis; Memo Diriker; Philip L. Gerald; Paul Gilbert; James L. Gring; Durrie A. Hayes; Susan Hilderbrand; Daniel S. Kuennen; C. Frederick Lankford; Dale A. Maginnis; I. Katherine Magruder; Stephen R. McHenry; L. Russell Molnar; W. Michael Newnam; David J. Ryan, Jr.; Hilary B. Spence; Michael C. Waal.
Ex officio (Eastern Shore Delegation): Walter M. Baker; Wheeler R. Baker; Bennett Bozman; Rudolph C. Cane; Richard F. Colburn; Norman H. Conway; Adelaide C. Eckardt; Ronald A. Guns; J. Robert Hooper; Charles A. McClenahan; David D. Rudolph; Kenneth D. Schisler; J. Lowell Stoltzfus; Mary Roe Walkup.
Ex officio: David S. Iannucci, Secretary of Business & Economic Development
Since these few decades of far-right wing global banking 1% FAKE GREEN REVOLUTION drove GMO farming---yes, all that farmland yielding crops are indeed STERILE. The State of Georgia as Texas has absolutely no fertile soil because they were tied to BIG AG.
This is how we KNOW which farmland will be converted to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories and which will be handed to global foreign corporations collecting REITS profits. Of course GMO farming-sustainability was FALSE----it was driven by far-right wing global banking for goodness sake. These are our 99% small and regional farmers many right wing------who will sell or fall into bankruptcy so the land will enfold into global banking FARMLAND LP hands.
We are not playing the WE TOLD YOU SO CARD------what REAL left social progressives are trying to do is educate how all this can be reversed------our US farmland made sterile can be rehabilitated -----our US farmland once having fresh water aquifers simply means we move our BREAD BASKETS to our northern US states----you know, the same ones building global factories and expanding tar sand oil and fracking.
All of those 5% freemason/Greek players listed above in our Maryland extension agencies are tied to global corporations/oil/gas/refineries-----with NO PUBLIC HEALTH in sight.
REIT TAX POLICIES HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL, FILLED WITH FRAUD AND CORRUPTION, THEY ARE NOW ACTING AGAINST OUR US, STATE, AND LOCAL SOVEREIGNTY----99% WE THE PEOPLE CAN SIMPLY VOID THESE FINANCIAL POLICIES AND DEALS.
GMO Corn Farmers are Losing Land, Swimming in Debt Says New Research
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/gmo-corn-farmers-losing-land-swimming-debt/#ixzz5KTvbD5w5
Follow us: @naturalsociety on Twitter | NaturalSociety on Facebook
By Christina Sarich
Posted On October 2, 2013
If you’ve wanted to look at GMOs purely from the financial bottom line, then this news should make you think twice about Biotech’s promises of better farming and better business. If GMOs really produced a higher yield and feed more hungry people, then why are GMO corn farmers losing land and pushing through debt?
GMO corn farmers are suffering primarily due to Bt-corn. Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis; it is the donor organism for genetically modified plants that are supposedly resistant to Round Up Ready chemicals, used profusely by Monsanto. There have been invasions of Bt-corn into organic crops, but this isn’t the issue in a purely financial assessment of GMOs.
GMO-free advocate, Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development has just released a book which explains the adverse effects of GMO-corn on farmers and shows ‘evidence of failure’ of what was supposed to have given farmers increased yields and better income. They are calling GMO a ‘vicious cycle of poverty’. Farmers all over the world are finding themselves with poor harvests and lack-luster incomes.
Dr. Chito Medina, Masipag’s national coordinator, reveals in the book:
“Promoters of GM crops always recite a litany of benefits including better yield, use of less pesticides, (being) less labor-intensive and improved income of farmers despite lack of sufficient evidence.”
Research on GMO-Farming Benefits Largely Hype, False
Medina points out that these benefits are promoted without truly considering socio-economic factors and long-term impact of GMO on soil, and biodiversity. The environmental effects alone could bankrupt an entire country. Medina said, “data on the socio-economic impact of GMOs are rarely and dramatically laid bare.”
The Philippine government gave a big nod to Bt-corn over 10 years ago, and since then more than 10 varieties have been approved for commercial propagation. This is more than enough time to consider the financial outcome of such a decision. And it isn’t looking good. Unfortunately, GM foods such as Bt eggplant and Golden Rice have been “field-tested” and are said to be up for commercialization – disheartening news when the Bt corn has done enough damage all on its own.
Farmers were enticed into buying GMO Bt corn at an introductory price back in 2000, one that was comparable to regular hybrid corn, and then GMO seed companies simplybaited and switched – jacking up prices similar to what you might expect with cell phone companies or insurance companies.
Using one example reported by the book, Round Up Ready GM corn was cheaply offered at P2,800 per 18-kilo bag in Cuartero, Capiz – good for planting an entire hectare. In 2008, the cost skyrocketed to P4,600 for a 9-kilo bag and P9,200 for two bags of RR corn seeds. The prices of fertilizers and pesticides also increased. In the end seeds, fertilizers and pesticides cost farmers almost 50% of their profits. They also cost the community their health and the future generations of farmers, depleted soil and a negatively impacted environment.
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The biggest source of business for these REIT---now FARMLAND REIT have been these few decades tied to our local, state, and US Treasury bonds. We discuss in detail how Obama era was massive US TREASURY AND MUNICIPAL BOND FRAUD-----and yes, much of that bond debt is tied to REIT. Baltimore was soaked in local municipal bond debt----as was the State of Maryland these few decades especially during O'Malley now HOGAN. This is where corporations have shed property taxes and our 99% of citizens at city, state, and Federal level have been paying those REIT taxes---this is to where all public pension funds are dwindling to being gone.
Here in Maryland Ehrlich and O'Malley made broad swaths of central Maryland farm and ranch land fall under the label of GREEN SUSTAINABILITY. Some of the most beautiful and productive land in Maryland set aside for global industrial land use much of it tied to FARMLAND REIT setting the stage for US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories to claim REIT and demand our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE pay those dastardly PIPERS.
There is NO POPULIST way to use REIT tax and real estate financial instruments-----global banking 5% pols and players made sure these policies worked ONE WAY----for corporate now global corporate profits.
Government bonds, REITs… and the search for yield
July 14, 2016 | Kim Iskyan
In an investment world suffering from thirst because of zero interest rates, real estate is cool water.
As we’ve written recently, government bond yields in many markets are negative, or at historically low levels. This is due in part to quantitative easing efforts by central banks, and a “flight to safety” by investors eager for certainty – even if the “certainty” is that they’ll lose money in government bonds.
As a result, the yield on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond is now at 1.48 percent. For Japan and Germany, 10-year bonds now have negative yields. And in Switzerland, all government bonds that mature within the next 30 years pay negative interest.
Singapore and Hong Kong bonds aren’t much better
Singapore’s government bonds are not in the negative yield club yet. But they are at historic lows. Right now on a 10-year government bond, Singaporeans will earn just 1.75 percent a year for the next ten years. Hong Kong’s bond yields are at historic lows, too. A ten-year sovereign bond is paying just 0.85 percent.
Extremely low bond yields are a problem for investors searching for income. They don’t want to earn (literally) less than nothing owning government bonds. Real estate is one answer.
Real estate vs. bond yields
In a recent study, commercial real estate giant Colliers International suggested that the Asia Pacific real estate market may benefit from Brexit. This is in part because Great Britain’s exit from the EU may result in more market uncertainty and a “flight to safety” by investors, and thus lower bond yields.
This may push some investors to look more closely at real estate as an investment option for yield. (Also, of course, lower interest rates make borrowing cheaper – which helps boost real estate returns.)
Lower government bond yields make the yield on rental properties that much more attractive by comparison. The table below shows the spread, or difference, between 10-year sovereign bond yields and the yield earned on real estate investment trusts, or REITs.
REIT and Bond Yield Spreads
A REIT is a publicly traded company that owns a collection of properties that produce rental income. Most of this rental income is then paid out to REIT shareholders in the form of a dividend. You can buy and sell REITs like a stock, paying just the brokerage transaction fees.
The income earned on a basket of investment properties – as reflected in the Hang Seng REIT Index – yields 4.9 percentage points more than a 10-year Hong Kong government bond. For Singapore, it’s a difference of 3.9 percentage points.
Lower for longer
Thanks to Brexit, interest rates will probably stay low for longer than many investors anticipated. The U.S. Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, will likely delay its next interest rate hike in part because of the economic uncertainty that came with the Brexit vote.
Because Hong Kong’s dollar is pegged to the U.S. dollar, Hong Kong’s interest rate policy follows what the U.S. does. That will keep lending rates down, real interest rates negative, and property prices high.
The Singapore dollar is not pegged to the U.S. dollar, and its central bank doesn’t adjust interest rates as part of its monetary policy. But, rates in Singapore generally mirror what’s happening in the U.S. So, as long as U.S. rates stay low, Singapore rates will stay low as well.
The REIT way to buy real estate
REITs are a low-priced and convenient way to buy real estate, and earn a far higher yield than government bonds, or many other yield-generating assets. But a REIT carries a lot more risk than owning a government bond. U.S. Treasuries, or government bonds, are viewed as “risk-free” – there’s virtually no chance of default.
REITs, though, trade like a stock and their prices fluctuate – and they could cut their dividends. And any increase in interest rates could hurt the dividend – and share price.
There are a number of REITs listed in Singapore and Hong Kong, but no good way to buy a basket of them. Besides the FTSE Straits Times REIT Index (noted in table above), the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) has a REIT index. It tracks 34 REITs that own everything from shopping malls to office buildings to residential properties. It has a yield of 5.8 percent, but is not available as an ETF. (The full list of the REITs that make up the index can be found on the SGX website.)
The Hong Kong Exchange has 11 listed REITs, 5 of which deal exclusively with mainland China property. The full list of Hong Kong-listed REITs can be found on the Hong Kong Exchange website.
If you would rather own a basket of REITs, instead of just picking one or two to invest in, you can try a U.S. REIT ETF. The yields on U.S. REITs are a little lower, but it will still give you some exposure to the real estate sector – and a higher yield than government bonds. One of the most popular is the iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF (New York Stock Exchange; ticker: IYR). It currently yields 3.6 percent and tracks a basket of U.S. REITs.
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'These purchases are often described as a kind of neocolonialism unique to China. So it might surprise you that the U.S. and the U.K. are basically on par with China when it comes to buying and leasing land in other countries'.
It is indeed a NEO-COLONIZATION as global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE universities in US were corrupted and made centers of organized crime in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. While our US small farmland was consolidated into BIG AG during Eisenhower late 1950s----to being GLOBAL BIG AG during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----the goal always having been making the US food DEPENDENT ----and we are well on our way as MOVING FORWARD hands all food grocery and distribution to global corporations and as all our US FARMLAND is contaminated, paved over with global corporate campuses.
So, US global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE universities moving money from massive frauds to their endowments spent these few decades buying fertile land overseas-----now being that FOOD IMPORTER to America as foreign corporations.
INDEED, THIS IS EXACTLY HOW CHINA UNDER MAO/USSR UNDER STALIN KILLED ANCIENT SMALL FARMING COMMUNITIES WITH NO FOOD DEPENDENCY TO CREATE A WEAPON OF MASS STARVATION........MOVING FORWARD IS GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
We have to stop buying potato chips in Baltimore as the bags are now so small with prices of $2. That is one potato making chips for $2. The food inflation is going to grow higher and higher and higher because the US is a net food IMPORTER.
If we look at what land is being bought---almost all is in southern equatorial nations-----draining those fresh water aquifers dry just as climate change hits these lands HARD.
An incredible image shows how powerful countries are buying up much of the world’s land
By Ana Swanson May 21, 2015
China, home to 20 percent of the world’s population but only 8 percent of the world’s arable land, has gone abroad in search of farmland. In Africa alone, Chinese “friendship farms” grow cabbages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raise fish in Angola, or harvest sesame seeds, cashews and peanuts in Mozambique.
These purchases are often described as a kind of neocolonialism unique to China. So it might surprise you that the U.S. and the U.K. are basically on par with China when it comes to buying and leasing land in other countries.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden found that most of the world's countries had bought or sold land internationally as of 2012 – 126 of the 195 countries recognized by the UN, according to their report. But the trade is dominated by just a few players, namely China, the U.K. and the U.S.
The global land trade also appears to reflect the uneven power relationship between the rich and the poor. With a few notable exceptions, the more developed countries of North America and Europe, Asia’s emerging economies, and the oil exporters of the Middle East are the ones buying up land, while the countries selling land are poorer nations in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.
The map below shows where governments and agribusinesses are buying and leasing land in foreign countries. Countries that are more engaged in buying land internationally are shown in grey or shades of yellow, while countries that sell more land are shown in red. The bigger the circle, the more trading partners a country has.
From “Architecture of the global land acquisition system: applying the tools of network science to identify key vulnerabilities,” Environmental Research Letters. J W Seaquist, Emma Li Johansson and Kimberly A Nicholas.This graphic shows the top 20 countries in the global land trade network, ordered by the largest number of trading partners. The gray bars indicate “imports” – where the country listed is buying another country’s land – while the red bars indicate “exports,” or countries that are selling their land.
From “Architecture of the global land acquisition system: applying the tools of network science to identify key vulnerabilities,” Environmental Research Letters. J W Seaquist, Emma Li Johansson and Kimberly A Nicholas.China ranks as the most active country in the world in land trade, purchasing land from 33 countries and but selling it to only three. The U.S. is a close second, buying land from 28 countries and selling to three, following by the U.K., which bought land from 30 countries.
The next three most active countries, Brazil, Australia and Ethiopia, are all net sellers of their land. Argentina, the Philippines, Sudan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Russia have also sold land to more countries than they have bought from. Singapore and the Netherlands, densely populated areas with limited agricultural land, are also net purchasers, as are Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and South Africa.
The amount of land being bought and sold internationally is small, but definitely not insignificant. According to a study published in 2013, about 0.75-1.75 percent of the world’s agricultural land has been exchanged through international deals. That total is likely to increase in coming years, as the world population grows, living standards continue to rise, and constraints on water and other natural resources increase.
Buying and selling land abroad is what some describe as "virtual trade" -- in a sense, countries can import things that aren't tradable, like water, land and even pollution, through the mix of goods and services they buy and sell abroad. So a country that has relatively little fresh water can "import" it by buying water-intensive crops and products, like meat or paper.
Virtual trade can be a very good thing: It can allow countries to specialize in products for which they have the necessary resources. Countries with abundant farmland, like Brazil, the U.S. and Australia, can help feed the world and be rewarded for it.
But there can also drawbacks to this kind of exchange. For one, it can lead to the poor use of domestic resources. (This is one reason why there's such an outcry against California’s exports of water-rich products, like almonds and pistachios, to countries like China, in the midst of the state's historic drought.)
Virtual trade also increases the risk of rich countries capturing the resources that poorer countries need for their own development. Given growing populations and the imminent threat of climate change, it's not hard to imagine that competition for agricultural land will increase in the future. Just in the last few years, the rising cost of oil and a spike in food prices in 2008 pushed more countries to purchase farmland abroad, according to the researchers. And developing and selling agricultural land can take its own toll on the host country, including a loss in biodiversity, an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, and more water use.
Another concern is that, once our global agricultural systems are linked, certain kinds of disasters could be exported abroad, just like the financial crisis was in 2008. An environmental or geopolitical crisis in Ethiopia could result in higher food prices in Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. It's all a consequence of our shrinking planet.
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We want to look again at our global banking 1% freemason LITERARY STARS to understand all of what has MOVED FORWARD in US today was planned during mid-1800s by OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS always intending to bring America back to colonial status.
If we look at our old friend LEWIS CARROLL ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS we see two things---we see a CHESS BOARD naming chess pieces differently from ordinary chess---we are through the looking glass you know. The BISHOP working for KINGS AND QUEENS becomes that WALRUS-----this was corrupting our US religions with FAKE 5% freemason/Greek players pretending to be Bishops. The KNIGHT was replaced with the CARPENTER the plan being not to take the US with continuous wars but to colonize with DEVELOPMENT. The KNIGHT of war becomes the CARPENTER of corporate development both still working for those global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.
The poem of WALRUS AND CARPENTER was a tale of warning----while smiling faces pretending to make NICE stroll down the beach, they have evil intentions of making a meal of those 99% of oysters. Here we see what we know is a right wing post calling the Walrus----OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS BISHOP/JESUIT------and CARPENTER being global development corporations as COMMUNIST AND SOCIALIST. Obama as farther right wing then Bush being the same---MOVING FORWARD GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
THE WALRUS & THE CARPENTER
A Great Example of the Hegelian Dialectic. Commnist vs. Socialist Obama vs. Bush Two Wrongs don't make a Right.
youtube.com
The book THE MOOR'S ACCOUNT is just the same tale------it is of course historical FICTION rewriting real history of OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS' development of our early America. THE MOOR's voice is used to make good references to moral values ---but THE MOOR is also made a tool to sell the idea that being made a REMITTANCE MAN----works out in the end.
You will notice that these groups sent over during American colonization to build new towns filled with PRINCIPALS being the governing 5% tied to the KINGS AND QUEENS----and the SETTLERS ----with rounds and rounds of settlers ----even principals dying and losing their futures. OUR US 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE paid a great price to attain our freedom, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness in making AMERICA the greatest nation in world history----attacked these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA working for those same global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.
'Fact Meets Fiction In Tale Of A Slave, Explorer And Survivor
September 7, 20145:36 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
NPR Staff
The Moor's Account
The Moor's Account
by Laila Lalami
In the spring of 1528, a crew of 600 Spanish and Portuguese soldiers landed on the Gulf Coast of the United States, hoping to find gold. The expedition was an utter disaster; only four members survived.
Within a year, nearly all of the men involved in the Narvaez Expedition had succumbed to disease, starvation, drowning or violent death in fights with indigenous people'.
Today we will bring REITS as tax evasion policies for corporations ------these policies installed during EISENHOWER era----having moved all property tax burden from corporations-----then global corporations to our 99% of WE THE PEOPLE through our pensions, 401Ks and local and state bond issues. When our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE think we are receiving DIVIDENDS from these muni-fund and private investment firm stocks and bonds---they are not understanding any amount in dividend is doubly lost in higher and higher and higher taxation and loss of value in pensions and 401Ks.
Here we see Obama era property taxes soared because US Treasury and state municipal bond frauds required higher taxes on our 99% to pay those REITS---FARMLAND REITS.
“I hear a lot of, ‘It’s your fault for not saving enough,’” said Aleta Crowe, whose family farms about 2,500 acres of grain crops in southwestern Indiana'.
This is what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and global banking 1% told our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE after massive systemic Federal agency and public trust frauds killed all our SAVINGS----YOU DIDN'T SAVE ENOUGH.
While national media and 5% global banking NGOS tell us all these taxes are created for social benefit ----social welfare----to fund pensions or Social Security and disability------it is all being funneled to support REITS----now FARMLAND REITS and yes, our 99% of small and regional farmers WILL LOSE THEIR LAND. MANY of our small and regional farmers are RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS-----and it is the right wing economics that kill REAL domestic free market economies open to all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens.
U.S. farmers fret as property taxes soar amid souring incomes
P.J. Huffstutter5 Min Read
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Collapsing prices for U.S. corn and soybeans have made it harder for some farmers to pay their property taxes, at a time when these tax bills are soaring and the rate of farm bankruptcies is growing.
Over the past three years, farmland property taxes have jumped as much as 400 percent in parts of the United States, according to state and federal government data. One farmer in Ohio said his property tax bill has skyrocketed to more than $100 an acre from less than $20 seven years ago.
Farmers say the problem, in many cases, is rooted in the reversal in the grain market. They now are scrambling to come up with the money to pay tax bills based heavily on incomes they enjoyed when crop prices were booming in 2012.
Back then, their taxes were much less because they were based partly on previous years when crop prices were lower.
Now farm incomes are falling due to cooling export demand and plummeting grain prices. In the Midwest, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings in the first quarter of 2016 soared 60 percent from the same period in 2013, according to court data. In the nation as a whole, Chapter 12 filings are up 18 percent over the same period.
“I hear a lot of, ‘It’s your fault for not saving enough,’” said Aleta Crowe, whose family farms about 2,500 acres of grain crops in southwestern Indiana. “If your property taxes doubled or tripled, would you have thought a few years ago to save money for taxes?”
APPRAISALS
Farmland is typically appraised at rates below true market value to keep levies affordable for farmers. In addition, many Midwestern states base farmland appraisals on a formula of current agricultural use value (CAUV), or the income a farmer can expect to earn, based on factors including commodity grain prices, farm rental rates, production expenses and interest rates.
These often use a rolling average aimed at balancing volatile swings in crop prices. But farmers say the formula was skewed by the historic rollercoaster ride taken by grain prices and farm incomes from 2010 to 2015.
Record-high crop prices in 2012, and all-time-high farm incomes in 2013, are now factoring in to property tax appraisals in some states. Meanwhile farm incomes plummeted 27 percent in 2014 from the year earlier and likely by another 38 percent in 2015, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts.
Midwestern farmers and ranchers have lobbied local and state lawmakers in Nebraska, Ohio and elsewhere for relief since grain prices began to fall off 2012 peaks, but have seen only modest legislative movement. Critics say farmers benefited from property tax breaks for decades and should have been better prepared.
The farming community did get some relief in Indiana, which enacted a law this spring to shift more than $100 million in tax burden off farmers by 2019.
STRAIN SEEN
Still, the economic strain is setting in.
Ceres Partners, a Indiana-based firm that handles a farmland fund with nearly $500 million in assets, has seen taxes squeeze its margins. The fund’s farmlands saw average property taxes jumped nearly 56 percent per acre in Indiana and 170 percent in Ohio between 2013 and 2015, said Brandon Zick, director of acquisitions and portfolio management.
Taxes are also stalling land deals. Farmland Partners Inc, a farmland real estate investment trust (REIT) with approximately $600 million in farmland assets, has dropped out of deals in Ohio and Nebraska over the past year because property taxes were too onerous.
“You look at the taxes and you think, ‘Holy cow, we can’t buy that farm’,” said Chief Executive Officer Paul Pittman. “We would be doing more deals in Nebraska if the property taxes weren’t so high and unpredictable.”
LAWYERING UP
The disconnect between taxes and revenue had people like Ohio corn farmer Bruce Kettelle trying to use every possible inch of his 200 acres to boost income this season.
If the weather holds, he expects his profit to be a little over $100 per acre. The tax bill due this autumn could be as much as $105 per acre.
Seven years ago, Kettelle said, his farm’s profit was $205 an acre - with a tax bill of $19.50 per acre.
“The formula now is trying to catch up with us, but it’s never been tested at the levels of profits we saw” in recent years, said Kettelle, whose farm has been in his family since the 1870s. “I’m a frugal farmer. And I don’t know how I’m going to survive this.”
Such fears have prompted a group of farmers and landowners to sue Ohio, claiming farmland owners were overcharged billions of dollars in property taxes. According to the state court filing, the average current agricultural use value tax collections from 2005 to 2013 jumped 374 percent, from $1.8 billion a year to $6.8 billion a year.
The case is expected to go to trial next year. Ohio state taxation officials declined to comment on the case.
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While global banking 1% fool our 99% of right wing voters saying END THE ESTATE TAX will solve growing taxation problems-----IT IS THE OPPOSITE. When today's FARM BILL ends all that far-right wing subsidy paying farmers not to farm-----paying farmers to grow only this crop or that crop-----pushing farmers into the stock market for crop insurance-----our 99% of US small and regional farmers will be great big losers----while FARMLAND REITS pay the property taxes for the largest of GLOBAL BIG AG corporations. Those small and regional farmers are now paying the property taxes for those industrial global farms.
What happens when we allow that ESTATE TAX to be killed? The ESTATE TAX was installed to keep global 1% massive land acquisitions from staying in place from one generation to another---it was not meant to target our small and regional farmers-----that transition happened as EISENHOWER REITS removed taxation of corporations. What is happening today is this----collectivized land to global big AG and US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories will all be paid for by higher and higher taxes on 99% of WE THE PEOPLE. These rising taxes have only just begun as all of what is today's US WORKER WAGES AND SALARIES ----will be called TAXES.
Farmland taxes increasing on real estate bill
- DUSTIN DUNCAN THE SOUTHERN
- May 22, 2016
Farmland owners will soon receive their tax bills in the mail and will most likely notice a slight bump in their assessment of property value.
The increase in farmland taxes will be decided by the land's productivity index. The productivity index determines the quality of the soil, according to Jessica Grammer, manager at the Jackson County Farm Bureau.
In Southern Illinois, the productivity index ranges from about 90 to about 100, which is the lower end of the scale. In central Illinois, many farmlands have an index rating in the 120s. According to the Illinois Farm Bureau, the lowest average index rating in Illinois is 90 in Johnson County and 125 in De Witt and Piatt Counties in central Illinois.
Currently, farmland with a 90 productivity index rating has a certified value of $74.73 per acre, and the land with an index rating of 125 is worth $522.88 per acre, according to values from the Farmland Assessment Technical Advisory Board.
The changes started in 2013 when the Illinois Department of Revenue introduced legislation that made a change to how farmland’s assessed values are determined. According to the farm bureau, the goal of taxing farmland based on the land’s use was to prevent urban sprawl and inflation from decimating agriculture in Illinois. It also provided statewide uniformity of assessed values on soils across the state.
The 1986 amendment to the Farmland Assessment Law limited the change in farmland assessments for each productivity index to 10 percent a year. The new Farmland Assessment Law shows the wide gap between the certified values and the values actually produced by the farmland assessment formula and farmland is taxed based on its certified value. The idea was to produce values of farmland ranging from a 2:1 ratio between the lowest index rating and the highest.
Grammer said there is a very high ratio at the moment – closer to 42:1.
The legislation is designed to bring it back to a 3:1, according to the Farm Bureau. The median index rating in Illinois is at 111. The calculated values on lower indexes will increase at a faster rate, while properties with a higher index will increase at a slower rate to bridge the gap.
Williamson County Commissioner Ron Ellis said based on his calculations, farmland with index rating of 91 will see a 37 percent increase in year one on property taxes and a 77 percent increase in year two. Farmland in central Illinois with a 111 index will see about a 10 percent increase, and then a 21 percent increase in the second year, he said.
For those with an index rating of 121, those owners will see a 6 percent increase in year one and then a 12 percent increase in year two, according to Ellis.
Williamson County Farmer Jim Anderson says he feels like Southern Illinois is getting the short end of the stick.
He said farmers in the northern part of the state have a better quality of soil and they should be paying more because they make more money from their land.
“Their soil is a higher quality, so they can sell it at a higher prices,” Anderson said. “With the exception of land costs, we have the same expenses in equipment … and time.”
As an example, Anderson said, if it costs $400 to plan an acres of corn which products 150 bushels, and at $4 a bushel it takes 100 bushels to break even and then he would have 50 additional bushels to make money. In central Illinois, he said the same land could produce 250 bushels an acre, but after breaking even, that northern farmer will have more bushels to make money.
The Farm Bureau said it will take an estimated 15 to 20 years for the assess values of the productivity indexes to reach their calculated value under the formula.
Ellis said real estate bills should have started to be mailed this weekend.
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Here we look locally at MARYLAND EASTERN SHORE. For these few decades REAL left social progressives have shouted against these global BIG MEAT BIG AG sold as creating JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Currently these farms are now transferring into regional meat with ranchers simply being sharecroppers to global corporations. First our Maryland Eastern Shore small farmers were killed and made sharecroppers to global BIG AG----these few decades have made the same of our small and regional ranchers. All of the above were able to exist because of FARM BILL subsidies, crop insurance, and stock market commodities dividends. Well, all that is disappearing for small and regional ranchers and farmers-----only the global BIG MEAT AND BIG AG are getting those REIT property tax evasions.
What is happening on our Maryland Eastern Shore as well is a complete loss of fresh water aquifers. All those global BIG AG TOMATOES----sent all over the world is leaving our Eastern Shore will no fresh water options. Cannot have even BIG MEAT and BIG AG with no fresh water access. What is MOVING FORWARD on Maryland and Virginia Eastern Shore?
OFFSHORE MASSIVE SEAFOOD PLATFORMS-----MASSIVE OIL AND NATURAL GAS PLATFORMS----AND LOTS OF GLOBAL REFINERIES.
Below we see Maryland raging global banking 5% Clinton neo-liberal MADELENO----and fellow global banking 5% player ROBBYN LEWIS pretending they are passing environmental policies when SAVE THE CHEASAPEAKE BAY is killed with MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS BALTIMORE MADE A GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL PORT. There has been no REAL left social progressive GREEN policies in Maryland especially as regards SAVE THE BAY. Those FAKE GREEN NGOs with 5% global banking players are lying about the quality of water, wetlands, and our coastal land.
'That’s why Food & Water Watch is working with these community partners, as well as Senator Rich Madaleno and Delegate Robbyn Lewis to introduce the Community Healthy Air Act in Annapolis this January'.
Maryland Assembly is top gun on pushing not only FARMLAND REITS----REITS of all kinds killing our 99% of Maryland citizens with high taxes then they claim it is all that social benefit and social welfare----NO, IT IS CORPORATE WELFARE thanks to Maryland Assembly global banking 1% Bush neo-cons and Clinton neo-liberals----O'MALLEY TAG TEAM WITH HOGAN.
There is NO plan for traditional families on Maryland Eastern Shore.
Traditional Family Agriculture to Corporate Industry
Years of weak environmental regulations, bad farm policy and corporate power have resulted in the explosion of destructive factory farms in Maryland
We all need safe food and clean water.
By Meg Robbins
“Why’d the chicken cross the road? … For better opportunities!” This joke received huge laughs last weekend at the annual Factory Farm Summit hosted by Socially Responsible Agricultural Project in Ocean City, Maryland. Activists, farmers, and frontline community members from across the country came together to share stories, trainings, and the clear message that factory farms cannot be in our future! I left both horrified with the power of the poultry industry in Maryland and reinvigorated to fight for healthy and sustainable agriculture practices.
I grew up in Maryland, so I am not new to the sight of driving past huge trucks filled with hundreds of chickens stacked in cages. But what I had not realized was the extent that massive factory farms have been popping up right next to neighborhoods on the Eastern Shore with zero consent from nearby homeowners.
I joined community members on a tour of farms in Somerset and Wicomico Counties, and I was shocked to see massive chicken houses right next to roads, homes, and schools. I learned these chicken houses will hold a quarter of a million birds per year, and there were often up to 10 houses in a row right next to the road; that’s almost 2.5 million birds per year on just one farm.
One neighbor of these massive factory farms, Lisa, told me about the horrors of living here. “When you step outside, the smell is unbearable. It gets in your clothes and in your nose, we can’t open the windows in the summer because of the stench.” But the issues go far past just smell.
There are dozens of chemicals in manure, most of which are air pollutants and most of which infiltrated into surrounding homes.
“I have to take allergy medicine everyday, and [my husband] has bronchitis now. This never used to happen to us.”
Lisa takes care of a small farm that is currently threatened by these chicken factories. The property has been in her family since the 1600’s, so she has no intention of moving despite growing health concerns. For her, moving isn’t even a viable option, since property values plummet the minute 2.5 million chickens move in next door.
“This is not agriculture, this is industry.”
The farmers running these factory chicken farms contract with mega-poultry corporations. These corporate “integrators” own the birds, provide the feed, and often require expensive upgrades to chicken houses which force farmers to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
For the past several decades bad farm policy has made maintaining a small, diversified family farm exceedingly difficult, and many farmers who contract with Perdue or Sanderson Farms or other integrators do so because they see few other options to save their farms.
As we pick up our banners for change, we are not anti-farmer, or anti-poultry. We are anti-factory farm!
On the factory farm tour, Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP) and others made sure not to vilify the farmers-- rather, the explosion of factory farms on Maryland’s eastern shore is a result of bad farm policy, corporate power and consolidation in the poultry industry, and weak environmental regulations.
Corporate integrators pit farmers against one another through the tournament system, whereby the top performing growers receive higher pay-- which comes from paying the lower performing growers less. The problem is that the corporate integrator can influence which farms produce bigger and better birds by controlling the quality of chicks that are shipped to those farms. Integrators use this system to punish growers for speaking out or for refusing to make expensive upgrades.
According to Dr. John Ikerd of University of Missouri, this system was set up intentionally to disrupt the traditional farming culture and community where neighbors would help each other and work together on their farms.
The end result is neighbor versus neighbor. When farmer income is based on how they produce in comparison to their neighbors, there is a huge wedge in any mobilization effort for a unified movement to stand up against the industry.
So as we pick up our banners for change, we are not anti-farmer, or anti-poultry. We are anti-factory farm!
Chief Dennis Coker of the Lenape tribe of Delaware shared that they have a tradition to consciously preserve our environment so that our descendants seven generations from now will thrive on our land. Right now, we are failing on this mission. But, there are community members saying enough is enough.
When community members risked their safety to speak out against these massive poultry players and ask their local government for help, they were met with skepticism, denial, and lack of action.
That’s why Food & Water Watch is working with these community partners, as well as Senator Rich Madaleno and Delegate Robbyn Lewis to introduce the Community Healthy Air Act in Annapolis this January.
THESE ARE THE SAME ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% PLAYER FAKE GREEN ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS AS ALL OF THESE FEW DECADES.
The Community Healthy Air Act will require the Maryland Department of the Environment to collect air quality and public health data from factory farms and to assess public health risks. This legislation is necessary to make sure that rural communities in Maryland are not left behind to suffer from asthma, lung disease, and cancer just so that we can have endless chicken on our plates.
We need the whole state of Maryland to recognize what is happening on the Eastern Shore and to speak up in support of the Community Healthy Air Act.
Sign our petition to your state representatives today and ask them to support the Community Healthy Air Act so we don’t value poultry profits over the health and safety of communities in Maryland!
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Each US state has these economic development committees ------here we see Maryland TASK FORCE with all kinds of departments each with offices on Maryland Eastern Shore dealing with small farmers----small business watermen------small ranchers-----all tied into our Maryland Eastern Shore job training, public transportation, environmental public health.
When we allow our state assemblies to be controlled with global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS pols as Maryland has these few decades----we have state agencies not working to protect 99% of Maryland Eastern Shore citizens---they are working to install MOVING FORWARD global oil and gas corporations, refineries, and offshore seafood platforms all owned by foreign global corporations---all not having any intention of hiring our Maryland 99% of Eastern Shore citizens and certainly not caring about environment or public health.
What these global corporations being installed on Maryland Eastern Shore do want is NOT TO PAY ANY TAXES----they want that land designated as REIT---FARMLAND REIT and will demand 99% of Eastern Maryland citizens pay higher and higher taxes.
WHEN TAXATION ON OUR US 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE BECOMES TO HIGH---OUR WAGES AND SALARIES BECOME TAXES AND WE ARE NOT PAID TO WORK.
All of these state appointed people to these agencies are 5% global banking players. They have positions paying them well today----not caring to where MOVING FORWARD will take their families tomorrow. All of these MARYLAND 5% freemason/Greek global banking players know MOVING FORWARD is GREAT LEAP FORWARD is far-right wing authoritarian brutal Stalin/Mao collectivizing all Maryland land with every intent towards weapon of mass starvation.
Seems like the CHAIR of this group is very tied to OIL CORPORATIONS.
GOVERNOR'S TASK FORCE ON EASTERN SHORE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
William R. Ecker, Chair (chosen by Governor)Contact: Vernon J. Thompson
c/o Division of Regional Development
Dept. of Business & Economic Development
217 East Redwood St., Baltimore, MD 21202 - 3316
(410) 767-0082; fax: (410) 333-1836
e-mail: vthompson@mdbusiness.state.md.us
Under the One Maryland economic development program for distressed counties, the Smart Growth Economic Development Infrastucture Fund was established in 1999 to assist qualified economically distressed counties (Chapter 304, Acts of 1999). To further that program, in December 1999, the Governor authorized the Governor's Task Force on Eastern Shore Economic Development (Executive Order 01.01.1999.36). The Task Force considered issues and obstacles in developing smart growth strategies for the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with special emphasis on Caroline, Dorchester, Somerset and Worcester counties.
The Task Force submitted a report to the Governor and General Assembly on January 9, 2001. In that report, the Task Force recommended that two permanent regional planning councils be established. Thereafter, the Tri-County Council for the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Mid-Shore Regional Council were created in 2001 (Chapters 527 & 528, Acts of 2001).
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
GOVERNOR'S TASK FORCE ON EASTERN SHORE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT William R. Ecker, Chair (chosen by Governor)
Appointed by Governor: Hal Adkins; George R. Ames, Jr.; Jon M. Andes, Ed.D.; Ruth Baker; Edward G. Banks, Jr., Esq.; James Barrett; Steven Baxter; Robert Behlke; J. Spicer Bell, Ed.D.; Walter F. Bell, Jr.; Don Wm. Bradley; Jack Brooks; Catherine A. Brown; David Bruning; Honiss W. Cane; W. R. (Nick) Carter; Betty B. Causey; Charles C. Cawley; David Clark; John B. Comeau; Jane R. Conlin; LaMonte E. Cooke; Lorraine A. Costella, Ph.D.; Tom Crawford; W. Lee Denny; Suzan Doordan; Glen Evans; Don Ewalt; Thomas A. Flowers, Ed.D.; Ronald G. Forsythe; Julia E. Foxwell; C. Ronald Franks; Caren L. French; Ed Fry; John General; Deborah R. Goeller; Gladys Goslee; Paulette P. Green; Rev. Leon Hall; Roger L. Harrell; Donald Hastings; Patrick Henry; Philip W. Hoon, Esq.; Julie M. Horner; Terri B. Jackson; Jean D. Johnson; Rebecca F. Loukides; Jeanne Lynch; William C. Malkus; Charles E. Massey; James N. Mathias, Jr.; Keith McMahan; Wayne A. Mills; Phyllis Rice Mitchell; Frederick W. (Rick) Nelson, Jr.; Jay L. Newcomb; James R. Nooney; G. Ray Nordstrom; Colleen K. Parrot; Richard Passwater; Franklin W. Prettyman; Gerald Redden; Edwin G. Richards; Roger Richardson; Carl D. Roberts, Ed.D.; Winifred Roche-Smith; George A. Sands, Jr.; D. J. (Duke) Shannahan; Susan C. Simmons; John Dale Smack; Edward C. Soutiere; Robert Spedden; Frederick E. Spence; Helen M. Spinelli; Dereith L. Sutton; John Shelton Sydnor; Jay W. Tawes; Jack Thomas; Michael D. Thomas, Ed.D.; Danny Thompson; Jeffrey F. Turner; John Valliant; Carl Widdowson; Douglas H. Wilson; Steven C. Wilson; Pam Wingate; Bill Wise III; H. K. Norman Wolske; David J. Wooten.
Appointed by Task Force Chair:
Nelson K. Bolender; Marlene F. Davis; Memo Diriker; Philip L. Gerald; Paul Gilbert; James L. Gring; Durrie A. Hayes; Susan Hilderbrand; Daniel S. Kuennen; C. Frederick Lankford; Dale A. Maginnis; I. Katherine Magruder; Stephen R. McHenry; L. Russell Molnar; W. Michael Newnam; David J. Ryan, Jr.; Hilary B. Spence; Michael C. Waal.
Ex officio (Eastern Shore Delegation): Walter M. Baker; Wheeler R. Baker; Bennett Bozman; Rudolph C. Cane; Richard F. Colburn; Norman H. Conway; Adelaide C. Eckardt; Ronald A. Guns; J. Robert Hooper; Charles A. McClenahan; David D. Rudolph; Kenneth D. Schisler; J. Lowell Stoltzfus; Mary Roe Walkup.
Ex officio: David S. Iannucci, Secretary of Business & Economic Development
- AGRICULTURE & NATURAL RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Frederick W. (Rick) Nelson, Jr., ChairECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT & INFRASTRUCTURE SUBCOMMITTEE
Robert Spedden, Chair
EDUCATION & WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT SUBCOMMITTEE
Lorraine A. Costella, Ph.D., Chair
GOVERNMENT SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE
Julia E. Foxwell, Chair
HEALTH SUBCOMMITTEE
Roger L. Harrell, Chair
TOURISM & RECREATION SUBCOMMITTEE
John Valliant, Chair
TRANSPORTATION SUBCOMMITTEE
Keith McMahan, Chair
- AGRICULTURE & NATURAL RESOURCES SUBCOMMITTEE
Since these few decades of far-right wing global banking 1% FAKE GREEN REVOLUTION drove GMO farming---yes, all that farmland yielding crops are indeed STERILE. The State of Georgia as Texas has absolutely no fertile soil because they were tied to BIG AG.
This is how we KNOW which farmland will be converted to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories and which will be handed to global foreign corporations collecting REITS profits. Of course GMO farming-sustainability was FALSE----it was driven by far-right wing global banking for goodness sake. These are our 99% small and regional farmers many right wing------who will sell or fall into bankruptcy so the land will enfold into global banking FARMLAND LP hands.
We are not playing the WE TOLD YOU SO CARD------what REAL left social progressives are trying to do is educate how all this can be reversed------our US farmland made sterile can be rehabilitated -----our US farmland once having fresh water aquifers simply means we move our BREAD BASKETS to our northern US states----you know, the same ones building global factories and expanding tar sand oil and fracking.
All of those 5% freemason/Greek players listed above in our Maryland extension agencies are tied to global corporations/oil/gas/refineries-----with NO PUBLIC HEALTH in sight.
REIT TAX POLICIES HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL, FILLED WITH FRAUD AND CORRUPTION, THEY ARE NOW ACTING AGAINST OUR US, STATE, AND LOCAL SOVEREIGNTY----99% WE THE PEOPLE CAN SIMPLY VOID THESE FINANCIAL POLICIES AND DEALS.
GMO Corn Farmers are Losing Land, Swimming in Debt Says New Research
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/gmo-corn-farmers-losing-land-swimming-debt/#ixzz5KTvbD5w5
Follow us: @naturalsociety on Twitter | NaturalSociety on Facebook
By Christina Sarich
Posted On October 2, 2013
If you’ve wanted to look at GMOs purely from the financial bottom line, then this news should make you think twice about Biotech’s promises of better farming and better business. If GMOs really produced a higher yield and feed more hungry people, then why are GMO corn farmers losing land and pushing through debt?
GMO corn farmers are suffering primarily due to Bt-corn. Bt stands for Bacillus thuringiensis; it is the donor organism for genetically modified plants that are supposedly resistant to Round Up Ready chemicals, used profusely by Monsanto. There have been invasions of Bt-corn into organic crops, but this isn’t the issue in a purely financial assessment of GMOs.
GMO-free advocate, Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development has just released a book which explains the adverse effects of GMO-corn on farmers and shows ‘evidence of failure’ of what was supposed to have given farmers increased yields and better income. They are calling GMO a ‘vicious cycle of poverty’. Farmers all over the world are finding themselves with poor harvests and lack-luster incomes.
Dr. Chito Medina, Masipag’s national coordinator, reveals in the book:
“Promoters of GM crops always recite a litany of benefits including better yield, use of less pesticides, (being) less labor-intensive and improved income of farmers despite lack of sufficient evidence.”
Research on GMO-Farming Benefits Largely Hype, False
Medina points out that these benefits are promoted without truly considering socio-economic factors and long-term impact of GMO on soil, and biodiversity. The environmental effects alone could bankrupt an entire country. Medina said, “data on the socio-economic impact of GMOs are rarely and dramatically laid bare.”
The Philippine government gave a big nod to Bt-corn over 10 years ago, and since then more than 10 varieties have been approved for commercial propagation. This is more than enough time to consider the financial outcome of such a decision. And it isn’t looking good. Unfortunately, GM foods such as Bt eggplant and Golden Rice have been “field-tested” and are said to be up for commercialization – disheartening news when the Bt corn has done enough damage all on its own.
Farmers were enticed into buying GMO Bt corn at an introductory price back in 2000, one that was comparable to regular hybrid corn, and then GMO seed companies simplybaited and switched – jacking up prices similar to what you might expect with cell phone companies or insurance companies.
Using one example reported by the book, Round Up Ready GM corn was cheaply offered at P2,800 per 18-kilo bag in Cuartero, Capiz – good for planting an entire hectare. In 2008, the cost skyrocketed to P4,600 for a 9-kilo bag and P9,200 for two bags of RR corn seeds. The prices of fertilizers and pesticides also increased. In the end seeds, fertilizers and pesticides cost farmers almost 50% of their profits. They also cost the community their health and the future generations of farmers, depleted soil and a negatively impacted environment.
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The biggest source of business for these REIT---now FARMLAND REIT have been these few decades tied to our local, state, and US Treasury bonds. We discuss in detail how Obama era was massive US TREASURY AND MUNICIPAL BOND FRAUD-----and yes, much of that bond debt is tied to REIT. Baltimore was soaked in local municipal bond debt----as was the State of Maryland these few decades especially during O'Malley now HOGAN. This is where corporations have shed property taxes and our 99% of citizens at city, state, and Federal level have been paying those REIT taxes---this is to where all public pension funds are dwindling to being gone.
Here in Maryland Ehrlich and O'Malley made broad swaths of central Maryland farm and ranch land fall under the label of GREEN SUSTAINABILITY. Some of the most beautiful and productive land in Maryland set aside for global industrial land use much of it tied to FARMLAND REIT setting the stage for US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global factories to claim REIT and demand our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE pay those dastardly PIPERS.
There is NO POPULIST way to use REIT tax and real estate financial instruments-----global banking 5% pols and players made sure these policies worked ONE WAY----for corporate now global corporate profits.
Government bonds, REITs… and the search for yield
July 14, 2016 | Kim Iskyan
In an investment world suffering from thirst because of zero interest rates, real estate is cool water.
As we’ve written recently, government bond yields in many markets are negative, or at historically low levels. This is due in part to quantitative easing efforts by central banks, and a “flight to safety” by investors eager for certainty – even if the “certainty” is that they’ll lose money in government bonds.
As a result, the yield on a ten-year U.S. Treasury bond is now at 1.48 percent. For Japan and Germany, 10-year bonds now have negative yields. And in Switzerland, all government bonds that mature within the next 30 years pay negative interest.
Singapore and Hong Kong bonds aren’t much better
Singapore’s government bonds are not in the negative yield club yet. But they are at historic lows. Right now on a 10-year government bond, Singaporeans will earn just 1.75 percent a year for the next ten years. Hong Kong’s bond yields are at historic lows, too. A ten-year sovereign bond is paying just 0.85 percent.
Extremely low bond yields are a problem for investors searching for income. They don’t want to earn (literally) less than nothing owning government bonds. Real estate is one answer.
Real estate vs. bond yields
In a recent study, commercial real estate giant Colliers International suggested that the Asia Pacific real estate market may benefit from Brexit. This is in part because Great Britain’s exit from the EU may result in more market uncertainty and a “flight to safety” by investors, and thus lower bond yields.
This may push some investors to look more closely at real estate as an investment option for yield. (Also, of course, lower interest rates make borrowing cheaper – which helps boost real estate returns.)
Lower government bond yields make the yield on rental properties that much more attractive by comparison. The table below shows the spread, or difference, between 10-year sovereign bond yields and the yield earned on real estate investment trusts, or REITs.
REIT and Bond Yield Spreads
A REIT is a publicly traded company that owns a collection of properties that produce rental income. Most of this rental income is then paid out to REIT shareholders in the form of a dividend. You can buy and sell REITs like a stock, paying just the brokerage transaction fees.
The income earned on a basket of investment properties – as reflected in the Hang Seng REIT Index – yields 4.9 percentage points more than a 10-year Hong Kong government bond. For Singapore, it’s a difference of 3.9 percentage points.
Lower for longer
Thanks to Brexit, interest rates will probably stay low for longer than many investors anticipated. The U.S. Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, will likely delay its next interest rate hike in part because of the economic uncertainty that came with the Brexit vote.
Because Hong Kong’s dollar is pegged to the U.S. dollar, Hong Kong’s interest rate policy follows what the U.S. does. That will keep lending rates down, real interest rates negative, and property prices high.
The Singapore dollar is not pegged to the U.S. dollar, and its central bank doesn’t adjust interest rates as part of its monetary policy. But, rates in Singapore generally mirror what’s happening in the U.S. So, as long as U.S. rates stay low, Singapore rates will stay low as well.
The REIT way to buy real estate
REITs are a low-priced and convenient way to buy real estate, and earn a far higher yield than government bonds, or many other yield-generating assets. But a REIT carries a lot more risk than owning a government bond. U.S. Treasuries, or government bonds, are viewed as “risk-free” – there’s virtually no chance of default.
REITs, though, trade like a stock and their prices fluctuate – and they could cut their dividends. And any increase in interest rates could hurt the dividend – and share price.
There are a number of REITs listed in Singapore and Hong Kong, but no good way to buy a basket of them. Besides the FTSE Straits Times REIT Index (noted in table above), the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) has a REIT index. It tracks 34 REITs that own everything from shopping malls to office buildings to residential properties. It has a yield of 5.8 percent, but is not available as an ETF. (The full list of the REITs that make up the index can be found on the SGX website.)
The Hong Kong Exchange has 11 listed REITs, 5 of which deal exclusively with mainland China property. The full list of Hong Kong-listed REITs can be found on the Hong Kong Exchange website.
If you would rather own a basket of REITs, instead of just picking one or two to invest in, you can try a U.S. REIT ETF. The yields on U.S. REITs are a little lower, but it will still give you some exposure to the real estate sector – and a higher yield than government bonds. One of the most popular is the iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF (New York Stock Exchange; ticker: IYR). It currently yields 3.6 percent and tracks a basket of U.S. REITs.
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'These purchases are often described as a kind of neocolonialism unique to China. So it might surprise you that the U.S. and the U.K. are basically on par with China when it comes to buying and leasing land in other countries'.
It is indeed a NEO-COLONIZATION as global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE universities in US were corrupted and made centers of organized crime in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. While our US small farmland was consolidated into BIG AG during Eisenhower late 1950s----to being GLOBAL BIG AG during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----the goal always having been making the US food DEPENDENT ----and we are well on our way as MOVING FORWARD hands all food grocery and distribution to global corporations and as all our US FARMLAND is contaminated, paved over with global corporate campuses.
So, US global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE universities moving money from massive frauds to their endowments spent these few decades buying fertile land overseas-----now being that FOOD IMPORTER to America as foreign corporations.
INDEED, THIS IS EXACTLY HOW CHINA UNDER MAO/USSR UNDER STALIN KILLED ANCIENT SMALL FARMING COMMUNITIES WITH NO FOOD DEPENDENCY TO CREATE A WEAPON OF MASS STARVATION........MOVING FORWARD IS GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
We have to stop buying potato chips in Baltimore as the bags are now so small with prices of $2. That is one potato making chips for $2. The food inflation is going to grow higher and higher and higher because the US is a net food IMPORTER.
If we look at what land is being bought---almost all is in southern equatorial nations-----draining those fresh water aquifers dry just as climate change hits these lands HARD.
An incredible image shows how powerful countries are buying up much of the world’s land
By Ana Swanson May 21, 2015
China, home to 20 percent of the world’s population but only 8 percent of the world’s arable land, has gone abroad in search of farmland. In Africa alone, Chinese “friendship farms” grow cabbages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raise fish in Angola, or harvest sesame seeds, cashews and peanuts in Mozambique.
These purchases are often described as a kind of neocolonialism unique to China. So it might surprise you that the U.S. and the U.K. are basically on par with China when it comes to buying and leasing land in other countries.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden found that most of the world's countries had bought or sold land internationally as of 2012 – 126 of the 195 countries recognized by the UN, according to their report. But the trade is dominated by just a few players, namely China, the U.K. and the U.S.
The global land trade also appears to reflect the uneven power relationship between the rich and the poor. With a few notable exceptions, the more developed countries of North America and Europe, Asia’s emerging economies, and the oil exporters of the Middle East are the ones buying up land, while the countries selling land are poorer nations in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.
The map below shows where governments and agribusinesses are buying and leasing land in foreign countries. Countries that are more engaged in buying land internationally are shown in grey or shades of yellow, while countries that sell more land are shown in red. The bigger the circle, the more trading partners a country has.
From “Architecture of the global land acquisition system: applying the tools of network science to identify key vulnerabilities,” Environmental Research Letters. J W Seaquist, Emma Li Johansson and Kimberly A Nicholas.This graphic shows the top 20 countries in the global land trade network, ordered by the largest number of trading partners. The gray bars indicate “imports” – where the country listed is buying another country’s land – while the red bars indicate “exports,” or countries that are selling their land.
From “Architecture of the global land acquisition system: applying the tools of network science to identify key vulnerabilities,” Environmental Research Letters. J W Seaquist, Emma Li Johansson and Kimberly A Nicholas.China ranks as the most active country in the world in land trade, purchasing land from 33 countries and but selling it to only three. The U.S. is a close second, buying land from 28 countries and selling to three, following by the U.K., which bought land from 30 countries.
The next three most active countries, Brazil, Australia and Ethiopia, are all net sellers of their land. Argentina, the Philippines, Sudan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Russia have also sold land to more countries than they have bought from. Singapore and the Netherlands, densely populated areas with limited agricultural land, are also net purchasers, as are Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and South Africa.
The amount of land being bought and sold internationally is small, but definitely not insignificant. According to a study published in 2013, about 0.75-1.75 percent of the world’s agricultural land has been exchanged through international deals. That total is likely to increase in coming years, as the world population grows, living standards continue to rise, and constraints on water and other natural resources increase.
Buying and selling land abroad is what some describe as "virtual trade" -- in a sense, countries can import things that aren't tradable, like water, land and even pollution, through the mix of goods and services they buy and sell abroad. So a country that has relatively little fresh water can "import" it by buying water-intensive crops and products, like meat or paper.
Virtual trade can be a very good thing: It can allow countries to specialize in products for which they have the necessary resources. Countries with abundant farmland, like Brazil, the U.S. and Australia, can help feed the world and be rewarded for it.
But there can also drawbacks to this kind of exchange. For one, it can lead to the poor use of domestic resources. (This is one reason why there's such an outcry against California’s exports of water-rich products, like almonds and pistachios, to countries like China, in the midst of the state's historic drought.)
Virtual trade also increases the risk of rich countries capturing the resources that poorer countries need for their own development. Given growing populations and the imminent threat of climate change, it's not hard to imagine that competition for agricultural land will increase in the future. Just in the last few years, the rising cost of oil and a spike in food prices in 2008 pushed more countries to purchase farmland abroad, according to the researchers. And developing and selling agricultural land can take its own toll on the host country, including a loss in biodiversity, an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, and more water use.
Another concern is that, once our global agricultural systems are linked, certain kinds of disasters could be exported abroad, just like the financial crisis was in 2008. An environmental or geopolitical crisis in Ethiopia could result in higher food prices in Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. It's all a consequence of our shrinking planet.
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We want to look again at our global banking 1% freemason LITERARY STARS to understand all of what has MOVED FORWARD in US today was planned during mid-1800s by OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS always intending to bring America back to colonial status.
If we look at our old friend LEWIS CARROLL ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS we see two things---we see a CHESS BOARD naming chess pieces differently from ordinary chess---we are through the looking glass you know. The BISHOP working for KINGS AND QUEENS becomes that WALRUS-----this was corrupting our US religions with FAKE 5% freemason/Greek players pretending to be Bishops. The KNIGHT was replaced with the CARPENTER the plan being not to take the US with continuous wars but to colonize with DEVELOPMENT. The KNIGHT of war becomes the CARPENTER of corporate development both still working for those global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.
The poem of WALRUS AND CARPENTER was a tale of warning----while smiling faces pretending to make NICE stroll down the beach, they have evil intentions of making a meal of those 99% of oysters. Here we see what we know is a right wing post calling the Walrus----OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS BISHOP/JESUIT------and CARPENTER being global development corporations as COMMUNIST AND SOCIALIST. Obama as farther right wing then Bush being the same---MOVING FORWARD GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
THE WALRUS & THE CARPENTER
A Great Example of the Hegelian Dialectic. Commnist vs. Socialist Obama vs. Bush Two Wrongs don't make a Right.
youtube.com
The book THE MOOR'S ACCOUNT is just the same tale------it is of course historical FICTION rewriting real history of OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS' development of our early America. THE MOOR's voice is used to make good references to moral values ---but THE MOOR is also made a tool to sell the idea that being made a REMITTANCE MAN----works out in the end.
You will notice that these groups sent over during American colonization to build new towns filled with PRINCIPALS being the governing 5% tied to the KINGS AND QUEENS----and the SETTLERS ----with rounds and rounds of settlers ----even principals dying and losing their futures. OUR US 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE paid a great price to attain our freedom, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness in making AMERICA the greatest nation in world history----attacked these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA working for those same global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.
'Fact Meets Fiction In Tale Of A Slave, Explorer And Survivor
September 7, 20145:36 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
NPR Staff
The Moor's Account
The Moor's Account
by Laila Lalami
In the spring of 1528, a crew of 600 Spanish and Portuguese soldiers landed on the Gulf Coast of the United States, hoping to find gold. The expedition was an utter disaster; only four members survived.
Within a year, nearly all of the men involved in the Narvaez Expedition had succumbed to disease, starvation, drowning or violent death in fights with indigenous people'.
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