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.

Yup. Rent and then food right now.

I assumed it was housing.

People really love quizzes.

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.

In the US? I think they just die?

They eat cake? /s

I went to get chicken for some meal prep a couple of days ago (Missouri, US) and a 1lb container of just chicken breast tenders costs $13, I figured it was a "labor" cost for cutting the tenders off before the customer buys it, like how a container of diced onion costs an order of magnitude higher than just buying a whole onion, but nope, the pack of 2 breasts right next to it cost basically the same, maybe only 50 cents cheaper, and I wasn't in anything expensive like a whole foods, just a generic lowcost midwest regional store. It's absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention 2 orange or red bell peppers costs $5....