I don't see why. The purpose of a corporation is to provide a hierarchy for organization of collective effort. In order to farm efficiently (i.e. not a small farm that mostly grows for farmer's market sales) in 2021, you can't simply have two adults and a bunch of children running around a farm. If you're going to hire anyone to help, it almost always makes sense to create at least an LLC.
I worry about it because unlike most other things, land is a zero sum game.
To my mind, corporations are only good if they 1. provide value 2. capture some fraction of that value, because you have a win-win situation on your hands.
This applies well to production of products, which is obviously not zero-sum. Land is, however, so whenever a corporation is making a profit off of land ownership, it means an individual (or government) is not.
I wouldn't worry that much about it. It isn't entirely uncommon for a farm or ranch to be registered as an LLC even if it is a small family operation. That land ownership would count as 'corporation owned', but in practice, it is just a normal family farm/ranch.
source: I grew up in, and live in Nebraska. Family ranch was registered as an LLC, but we were just a small family operation, and by this point nonexistent (parents sold out and retired).
You have a point that land is a scarce and excludable good and there's an opportunity cost to a corporation owning land.
The initial purchase of the land by the corporation wasn't zero sum, however. The previous landowner and the corporation both gained subjective utility from the transaction (otherwise they wouldn't have engaged in it), so the transaction itself was positive sum.
Doesn't the parent comment already anticipate this argument? They're saying that the corporation does provide value because it gets more from the land than individuals would.
But this is only true of running the land. I feel that it would be better for land to be owned by real people (preferably citizens of whichever country it is) given that there is a finite amount of it. If corporations are better farmers, they will still be keen to rent it / run it for the owner.
The alternative is probably a future where all land is owned by corporations and all people are just renting, which to me sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I guess it'd help to explain why I, Joe Farmer, would care if I'm renting land from Acme Inc or Bob Gentry. Basically, it sounds like you believe there's differnet incentives for individuals vs corporations here, and I'm not entirely sure there is.
The incentives don't need to be different, it just goes back to my underlying philosophy of business.
People will always exist. Corporations do not need to. I only believe corporations / companies should exist in situations where 1. they are providing value 2. capturing a portion of that value. Basically any corporation that is managing to do 2 without first doing 1 (or is managing to capture more value in step 2 than they are creating in step 1) is a business that should not exist.
As such, companies should not exist in spaces where they are not providing added value, and it is impossible for them to do so as a land-owner, because the owner is not providing any value, the land was always there. They didn't create it. Yes, Bob Gentry is not providing any value either, but again people will always exist, companies should not unless they serve a distinct purpose from what a person can.
But on top of that I do actually think the incentives are different. Companies and people are fundamentally different beasts. For starters, companies are effectively amoral.
land is zero sum, but the economic value of land isn't. Farming actual food or other commodities provides value, and the better techniques allows you to provide more value.
I basically agree about pure land ownership though. Obviously this is one of the main leftist critiques of capitalist societies. I'm not sure if state ownership is any better on net though (in general, I'm fine with national parks or whatever), mostly for logistical reasons. There's a lot of external factors to consider with land too. You don't want people to do whatever and poison said land via poor management or irresponsible resource extraction.
There's nothing wrong with a corporation in principle, just like there's nothing wrong in principle with for-profit universities or payday loans. In practice, it's easy to see that many people who run corporations use them as an excuse for taking entirely self-interested actions that harm the rest of society. "I'm sorry, but I have to act in the best interest of the company, you understand." Of course there's nothing magic about corporations, and it's perfectly possible for individuals and private owners to be just as cruel. For purely cultural reasons, it's easier for most people to act in self interest when it feels like they're doing it for The Company rather than themselves.
Note that there are other ways to organize people to farm efficiently, like worker cooperatives.
Well, farming in 2021 is stupidly efficient. Not much efficiency to squeeze out really. The productivity/efficiency has been incredible. Take a look at first set of charts:
Producing more crops in less land is not really more "efficient" because it requires significantly more synthetic (fossil fuel derived) fertilizer. Good top soil produces fertilizer itself, so growing the same yield on less acreage means higher fertilizer usage which means less efficiency, not more. Not to mention corporate farmland is more likely to grow monoculture crops and do less crop rotation, which also increases fertilizer usage and decreases topsoil depth.
Corporate farming COULD be more efficient, but in common practice it is not.
> Producing more crops in less land is not really more "efficient"
I'm open to different definitions of efficiency, but this isn't really in question. HOW they are getting that efficiency (more fertilizer, etc.) we can agree/disagree. But they are more efficient in the most basic sense possible [more production, less land].
For ownership purposes in most jurisdictions in the US, private ownership is anything that's not government.
It includes individuals, privately-held & publically-traded corporations, and most trusts or other legal entities that aren't government controlled.
There might be different tax polices and exemptions carved out for the different entities, but the legal structure of ownership is the same.
This does not include anything federal, military, state, or local (including tribal) government, or is otherwise a special case, like some conservation non-profits, or things like public land trusts.
But if any part the government wants to expropriate or otherwise seize privately held land, it has to go through the same process no matter what type of legal entity.
North Dakota is a bit strict on corporations owning a farm. "... since only a farm limited liability company may own or lease land used for farming or production of livestock."
