Yellowstone writ large: the long, silent, no-holds barred land grab
In hindsight, we see that the war on farmers is all-encompassing and extraordinary, and the HBO TV series only skims the surface of what goes on
A few starting points…
Pressure on small farmers to sell their land has been increasing for generations
Conglomerates and billionaires are quietly buying it up
Farms are increasing in value in the face of depression
New techniques for breaking the backs of farmers are being rolled out
HBO’s smash hit series Yellowstone has raised awareness of land grab tactics
We all know by now that Bill Gates is the #1 private farmland owner in America, and although he loves to make dozens of media appearances and brag about his stupid, embarrassing, or legally dubious initiatives, he never seems to talk about this. He will gladly advertise that he drinks water made from human feces…
…but when was the last time he bragged about owning America’s heartland?
And hopefully you know by now that the Netherlands cutting straight to the point and simply forcing farmers off their own land…
…destroying the central pillar of capitalist logic, which is that landowners are untouchable and sovereign. Socialist countries are taking off the mask and stealing the property of citizens in the name of pollution and the Green World Order. In times past this may have provoked blood in the streets and politicians hung from lamp posts, but in today’s security state it feels like nothing can be done.
If you want to know why, maybe this has something to do with it.
“Disappearing” farms: coincidence or conspiracy?
Check out this article about the steady decline of family-owned Canadian farms and ask yourself whether its as accidental as we are led to believe.
Canada’s agriculture industry has been undergoing significant changes over the past 45 years. Since the 1970s, the number of farms has been steadily declining, but not all farms have been impacted equally — mid-size farms have been hit the hardest, as the number of small and large farms increases.
The mid-size farm category used to cover the majority of agricultural operations. These tended to be operated by a single farmer working on a full-time basis to support a single farm family. Now, a range of farm sizes exist, with small ones often being operated by farmers with off-farm employment, and larger ones being run by several farmers. [emphasis mine]
Having come from a long line of mid-size farmers myself, but having inherited nothing by the time it was my turn, I’m all-too-aware of the trend. My grandparents on both sides had modest farms, selling the goods they produced to pay the bills. But my aunts and uncles, who straddled the line between Baby Boomers and Generation X, forsook the project and sold the land for piddling cash. A few started their own farms, but without education, most ended up working basic jobs they came to regret. They imagined that mundane hourly pay would be far superior to the horrors of the farming life, which absorbed all of one’s time and energy.
A bigger problem yet? Government regulations. As the paperwork increased, my immigrant family had little choice but to jump out or subject themselves to humiliating inspections, interference, and bureaucracy. Not to mention the role of technology, which gave high yields and larger market share to those who adopted early, expanded aggressively, and plunged themselves into debt in order to come out on top. According to the data, the number of farms has fallen by 44 per cent from ~340,000 (in 1976) to ~190,000 (in 2021).
Depression, foreclosure, profit
As we head into a new Great Depression, we should expect more bank foreclosures on farms, who are often in debt and struggling to stay keep up. This is what happened in the 1930s. The dustbowl, banking crash, and subsequent depression meant farmers had to sell their land for pennies. Legislation was introduced to help soften the blow, but also to facilitate the purchase and avoid massacres. Speculators who bought up the land became multi-millionaires, industrialists, and real estate giants.
Farmland is a limited resource, highly valuable, and full of potential, especially as food shortages roar to the forefront. Just look at the price trend:
Farmland prices in the Midwest, the nation’s breadbasket, jumped 20% just in the third quarter from a year earlier — bucking a downturn in the residential real estate market, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the National Association of Realtors. That was the eleventh consecutive quarter of gains, the longest streak since 2014.
So of course the billionaire investor class wants to kick off the farmers and grab the land for themselves.
The many deaths of ‘the farmer’
Obviously, the number one cudgel used to batter the farmer today is the Green Agenda, popularly known thanks to the World Economic Forum and Agenda 21, directly stabbing at him with lies, hoaxes, and regulations that are based on fake science, media hysteria, and outright tyranny. If you want to stay up to date on the “war on food” related to this, you must follow IceAgeFarmer.
But rather than focus on that, I’d like to point out the more subtle and long-term war that has been going on.
Stereotypes and culture war
“Flyover country” is only half the story. The open contempt of the farmer is no coincidence, and hardly organic. Psychological warfare against the farmer has been a deliberate feature of American pop culture for generations.
Having grown up in a farming legacy, I know how conflicted the children of farmers can be about their identity. Every time I visited one of my cousins’ farms I was blown away at their freedom, independence, awesome ATVs and dirtbikes, guns, pets, and most of all their astounding skills. At the same age as I was riding my bicycle and asking permission to go to a local basketball court, my farmer cousins could drive twelve kinds of diesel-fueled heavy machinery without parental supervision, with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. In an age before cellphones, they casually raced dirtbikes, snowmobiles, or four-wheelers between locations just to pass along a message. But they didn’t think they were cool and independent. They thought it was hillbilly, redneck, backwoods, pain-in-the-ass dictatorship. Although clearly superior in their competence, they envied the ability to sit like a vegetable and watch TV for five hours a day. But this is all wrong. Canadian farmers are a far cry from decrepit Louisiana swamp lords and Alabama KKK cowboys, which are cultural war cartoons to begin with.
Where did get this stigma? From the disrespectful culture around them. Nobody celebrated farmers, and at school they were always seen with a mixture of ridicule and pity. Mind you, that was long before today’s hysterical projections of colonialism, white privilege, emissions apocalypse, and animal-born diseases. The rhetoric has only ramped up to try to demoralize the young generation of farmers.
As the children of farmers lose their pride in their family and farm, they simply go to university or drop out of the family business, shattering the crucial cycle of transferring skills and work ethic, which is needed to continue growing and competing under pressure.
Schools and suburbia
Where I come from, there’s another little-known strategy for getting farmers to sell. It goes like this: as suburbia mindlessly expands, people move in and buy at higher prices wherever schools are built. This jacks up the real estate prices, which in turn raises taxes to pay for the schools. But rather than build large schools with tons of extra capacity, schools are built below the needed capacity to begin with, ensuring that they fill up immediately and require more land to build more schools.
How do they get away with this? Simple. They pack the city council with real estate agents, who then get to decide how taxpayer money is spent, and where. They decide the future of the town, which always encroaches on farmers and pressures them to sell, since they can’t make enough money to pay their property taxes.
Weather wars
Record-breaking winters:
I have been enjoying Yellowstone as a window into the political, economic, and legal nightmare of ranching and farming, even if the drama is over the top. I catch glimpses of the attitude I saw in my family, and I wonder what could have been if my family could have stayed together, pooled their resources, and expanded in the face of hardship.
But here I am, connecting dots. As with everything else, the globalist takeover is running out of patience and getting sloppy, but the agenda is the same. Destroying the farmer is just one of many important facets of the Green World Order, dragging us into a Neofeudalist hell run by banks. What have I missed? Leave a comment and let me know.
Another great article, Mr. Wolfe. Concisely weaving the many factors of one of many of the great issues of our time; especially helpful for waking the masses.
I especially took note of subject of 'weather wars', a subject to expand upon in itself. The subject of geo-engineering has been kept in the shadows, out of the public's sight, for far too long.
The proliferation of it's usage has potential ramifications that go beyond simply mankind's existence upon this blue planet.
Keep up the good work.
I cant agree more with your article.
I grew up in rural Kansas, on a farm with my grand parents on 80 acres.
I did not know anything about "being a farmers kid" until l was in school being indoctrinated by teachers about "how oppressed and abused I was" because from the times taking baths outside, out house, going to the creek to fetch water, etc. Then as a teenager waking up at 4AM to feed livestock and doing chores before school.
When I shared my life with those I went to school with be it with adults or children, most said I was being abused and I should report my family then the state would send me to foster homes that I got to play with toys, etc. and be a normal kid.
I did report my family, I did start then to go through the system and that is where the horrors of my life started.
I am now middle aged (50) and married 28yrs with grandchildren, I now sit here wishing I could just go back to the farm and live and work to provide for my family and other families as that at the end of the day and after a lifetime is the only thing I value, each other and my love for all and to see the pure evil and systems and destruction that has and WILL SHORTLY START MUCH MORE... I was complacent and may God have mercy on us.
Love your work Terry. Thank you for your hard work.