Reply #11: A nationalized resource? [View All]

[doodadem]

Farmland should be confiscated for the common good? That sounds like communism to me!
One thing that would really help the small farmer, is don't allow giant corporations like Boswell (here in CA) to carve up their vast holdings into smaller farms, so that they "qualify" for government farm subsidies. They take all the money, and the small family farmer gets next to nothing that way.
So what would people do if they couldn't "sell" their farmland? I have two different friends, also both horse people like me, who had to relocate. They both had their properties for sale for 2-3 years, and tried like hell to sell it to someone who would keep it as a farm, keep the wonderful old barns, and the grassy pastures. But economics and desperation finally prevailed. They both ended up selling to developers, who promptly leveled everything, and started seeing how many houses they could cram in per foot. Neither of these were huge tracts--30-50 acres, but prohibitively expensive for an individual to buy.
I see this all ending soon when the housing boom busts anyway.