Don’t worry though we solved inflation. We just removed it from our calculations. If we don’t count it: it’s not there!
Investment funds stocking up on US farmland in safe-haven bet
Investment funds have become voracious buyers of U.S. farmland, amassing over a million acres as they seek a hedge against inflation and aim to benefit from the growing global demand for food, according to data reviewed by Reuters and interviews with fund executives.
The trend worries some U.S. lawmakers who fear corporate interest will make agricultural land unaffordable for the next generation of farmers. Those lawmakers are floating a bill in Congress that would impose restrictions on the industry’s purchases.
Though their acreage is a small slice of the nearly 900 million acres of U.S. farmland, the pace of acquisitions by investment firms like Manulife Investment Management and Nuveen has quickened since the 2008 global financial crisis drove firms to seek new investment vehicles, according to Reuters interviews with fund managers and an analysis of data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF).
The number of properties owned by such firms increased 231% between 2008 and the second quarter of 2023, and the value of those holdings rose more than 800% to around $16.2 billion, according to NCREIF’s quarterly farmland index, which tracks the holdings of the seven largest firms in farmland investment.
Farmland offers steady returns even in periods of high inflation, and firms hope crop demand will remain steady as the United Nations predicts the world will need 60% more food by 2050 due to population growth.
You don’t want to confuse “inflation” with “economic growth”. One makes prices go up because the evil bad salaries are increasing. But the other makes profits go up because of the smart efficient business net revenues are increasing.
A prosperous nation needs big new investments in the future. And that means speculating in our domestic breadbasket, so we can maximize the price of inelastic commodities in an effort to optimize consumption habits. You don’t like waste, do you? Optimizing price reduces waste. Its all right here in the book Basic Economics by totally non-problematic and very smart guy Thomas Sowell.
While I like gardening, unironically advising people to grow their own food to cut costs is just bonkers.
It takes months to grow anything, and given the limited space, you can’t grow much anyway. You’ll be lucky to grow 20€ worth of food on your balcony while spending hours doing the gardening. That’s not cost effective.
And that doesn’t even count the cost of materials to get started.
Definitely not against gardening, me and my partners are in the process of getting our garden going in our new place, but dirt alone could easily eat up the cost savings if you have to build out your planters.
Gardening has its own associated costs with supplies and requires space
It’s the cost of supplies and garden maintenance and see requirement vs the cost of food at the supermarket
It needs to cost less than the growable food you can buy at the store
You can get away with very little supplies, actually. Basically just a small shovel, the rest be salvaged.
Pots can be made from old plastic bins/containers, soil/fertilizer can be made from food waste using worms, seeds can be made from surprisingly many fruits/vegetables. Pumpkin seeds are right inside the pumpkin, potatoes and beans can be put right into the soil, even tomatoes can be grown from store bought ones.
And while it’s a really cool hobby: you’re right regarding the cost effectiveness. Unless you happen to have a significant plot of land, it won’t make a dent in your grocery bill.
Plastic can leech plastic into your food, I know this personally from getting headaches from using soda bottles as water bottles
This is not great advice. Using random crap for planters can leech chemicals into your fruits and veggies. Also, you need seed-potatoes to grow potatoes you can eat. You cannot grow edible potatoes from what you buy in a grocery store.
As they’re living with their parents because they can’t afford an apartment of their own.
This is a serious point. I couldn’t afford a place until I was in a relationship. And that was a long time ago. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be with today’s rent.
Having a roommate turned an apartment from unaffordable luxury to merely 25% of my paycheck.
I honestly think having roommates is fun, particularly if you’re old friends anyway. But its crazy that a spot at the ass end of town was eating so much of my take home pay even after we cut the bill in half.
Do we REALLY need to quiz people to know this? Ffs.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/generation-z-is-unprecedentedly-rich
Y’all are buying homes just fine compared to the last few generations.
