The Land Investment Monthly is a round-up of articles and headlines published by the farm press, business media and financial publications with insights into buying, selling or investing in farmland, recreational ground or development ground.

Here's How America Uses Its Land

There are many statistical measures that show how productive the U.S. is. Its economy is the largest in the world and grew at a rate of 4.1 percent last quarter, its fastest pace since 2014. The unemployment rate is near the lowest mark in a half century.

What can be harder to decipher is how Americans use their land to create wealth. The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure. Read More

There's a $1 billion plot of land for sale on an LA hilltop big enough to fit a home the size of Disneyland, but only about 100 people in the world could buy it

Up for sale: a 157-acre mountain at the highest peak in Beverly Hills towering over Los Angeles. And it's all yours for $1 billion.

Expensive real estate may come as no surprise in the famous 90210 ZIP code, but there's no denying the jaw-dropping value of a 10-figure price tag. It sets the record for Los Angeles' most expensive listing ever, the Los Angeles Times reports, and no one in the world is publicly known to have paid that much for personal property, according to The New York Times. Read More

Your produce is less healthy than it was 70 years ago. These farmers might change that

There it sits – in all its green glory – in the produce section of your local grocery store.   

Broccoli. One of the most nutritious vegetables on the planet. But 70 years ago, it contained twice the calcium on average and more than five times the amount of Vitamin A.

The same could be said for a lot of our fruits and vegetables. Why? How?

 The answers lie in the soil and how Americans farm it.  Read More

Gladstone Land acquires five Florida farms for $37.4 million

Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Gladstone Land is in the news […] announcing that it has agreed to acquire five farms in southern Florida totaling 5,630 acres for a total consideration of $37.4 million.

Upon completion of the deal, which will add significantly to the company’s high-value fruit and vegetable acreage in the state, Gladstone entered into a multi-year, triple net lease with a top agricultural operation. Read More

Iowa farmers' angst grows as tariffs mount. But many still back Trump and his allies ... for now

So far, farmers and GOP leaders say ag country mostly supports the president's quest for better trade deals with China, Mexico, Canada and other major trade partners.

But they question how long that will last amid an avalanche of farm challenges: tariffs in their largest export markets, a record amount of soybeans in bins and elevators, and commodity prices that fail to cover the costs to grow their crops. Read More

A Taste of Summer: Cultivating the perfect park experience

The farm-to-table movement is mostly about knowing where your food comes from.

Chef Ben Bebenroth has it down to the tenth of a mile. 

[…]

As if running a restaurant wasn't hard enough, this ex-Marine with a culinary school background decided to try growing the food himself. He moved his wife and two young children onto 13 acres of government soil. Technically, it's our farm. The Bebenroths moved out of the city, and into a national park.

It's just one of the many hundreds of farms that were in Cuyahoga Valley, said Ranger Pamela Barnes, of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, situated between Cleveland and Akron. Long before this land became a park, it was farmed by generations of Ohioans.  Read more

If farmers sold their data instead of giving it away, would anybody buy?

[John] Deere equips tractors with sensors that pull all manner of farming data—from the presence of nutrients in the soil, to the locations of seeds planted, and the volume of crops harvested—for the benefit of farmers who own its equipment. Since the first crop monitor appeared in a Deere combine in 1995, precision agriculture (as the data-heavy practice of computerized farming is known) has been hailed as key to improving the efficiency, and ultimately the yields, of commodity and large-scale farmers. Automated tractors equipped with GPS sensors and remote controls now farm up to 70 percent of cropland in North America.

[…]

“All this incredible technology that everybody’s come up with, that everybody talks about—are we making any more money? We’re making less,” Seba said. “So what it’s done is make companies hugely rich, which is fine. I’ve got no problems, but why would you not—throw me a bone, you know? Why can’t a farmer participate in giving his data, and getting paid for it?” Read More