For real though I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks.

We may be watching a land grab in progress? https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1164256106778173442

Farmland's long been a favored investment class, but it's been accelerating since the 2008 crash.

I've had VC firms reach out to me hoping for free publicity on their "uber but for farmland investments!" apps. https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1142890340128645120?s=19

I hope they vet their investments better than they vet the people they ask for free publicity LMAO

The first rule of land grabbing is you never do a frontal assault- just buying it up- if you can avoid it. That's too much $ and effort.

What you do is fuck around with the owners until they're in dire straits & either sell cheap, just leave, or go bankrupt & off to auction.

The Trump admin's farm policy looks pretty foolish if you think they're trying to keep farms open.

If they're trying to shutter them though, it's pretty damn brilliant.

• Run an ethnic purge on the labor force

• Shut off the export markets

• Gut the ethanol program (which is a real piece of crap program btw, but the kind that significantly boosts farmland prices)

• And idk maybe scuttle USDA-ERS bc it's a pain-in-the-ass tattletale.

Note which programs have NOT been touched- those that pay out on a per-acre basis like crop insurance, subsidies, and CRP (crop reserve program, basically the Depression-era one that pays landowners not to farm).

You'd think the ag industry would know better bc most of their considerable wealth comes from doing land grabs, but so far they've pretty much been the perfect victim. Trusting, subdued, & hell, even supportive.

So, here's the upshot.

Between the wacky policy situation, worsening weather, and fairly good odds of an economic recession in the near future,

a decent amount of the Corn Belt & Plains is probably about to go up for sale CHEAP.

It doesn't all have to go to absentee corn & beanlords, folks. It's pretty clear we have a serious overproduction problem & one of the best ways to keep farms viable in the future is cut down on farm acreage.

(That's the literal point of the CRP program, after all.)

Turning the Midwest and Plains from prairie into cropland released about

5.5-6 BILLION TONS

of carbon into the atmosphere.

That means by putting land back into prairie, WE CAN PUT IT BACK.

At some point "carbon sequestration" became synonymous with trees.

But it really shouldn't be.

Grasses are actually better at C storage than trees in many respects- they're fast, and they put most of their carbon underground where it can't burn up in wildfires.

Massive prairie restoration would:

• Cut down on farmland & urban flooding

• Stabilize crop prices

• Clean up the Gulf of Mexico & interior waterways

• Sock away enormous amounts of carbon.

I see all you millionaires spending fortunes on doomed presidential runs & startups that can't find their own ass with a road map.

Want to do something important & real? LET'S PUT SOME PRAIRIE BACK BITCHES

FWIW, I don't think the Nature Conservancy & other enviro trusts are the way to go here. I mean, they're ok.

But you know who's mastered tending the prairies for high-quality habitat? Who sequestered all that carbon in the first place?

You can probably guess where this is going

That thick, luscious, carbon-rich prairie sod wasn't just a natural occurrence.

It was groomed into place by Indigenous people carefully using fire & other tools to maximize the grass's growth. Among other things, that work maximized the carbon in the ground.

Those skills aren't lost in the past. We don't have to reinvent this. There are lots of Native folks alive today who know how.

Maybe let them? I'm just saying.

People deserve to have good livelihoods doing things that work. And it's hard to argue that corn & soy ag is that.

A really great example of this is @TankaBar in SD. They're raising bison for food, & actually doing the work of restoring the prairies to do so.

They've been passed over for investment because imitators using feedlots have prettier growth projections. https://newfoodeconomy.org/tanka-bar-general-mills-epic-provisions-bison-bars/

Work like this has SO MUCH POWER to head off disaster. There are already people out there doing it. They just might be able to use some outside support.

*The kind that recognizes their expertise & actually supports instead of trying to jump in the driver's seat.

It's really scary & chaotic right now, but when things are changing rapidly, it also opens up lots of opportunities that are usually locked away.

Let's be alert. Let's not miss them. Stuff like this doesn't come along every lifetime.

fml thread broke

Some folks to follow on Indigenous food & land restoration (and I'm missing tons of people for sure, pls add more in the replies):

@Alethea_Aggiuq

@mariahgladstone

@gindaanis

@Debkrol

@BadSalishGirl

@TankaBar & @TankaBar_Rachel

There are also lots of land work groups that just aren't on twitter, which is where I get most of my info on this stuff from. Again if anyone has any suggestions please drop them in the replies.

oh no I left out @akihsara

and @itatiVCS and @PasturesPolitic are grassland science wizards, they also Know Things and can Do Things

*should mention that lots of the folks listed here aren't working in/on grasslands, they're working with biomes all over North America

but since we were doing Indigenous food + land shoutouts it seemed like a good time for a general roll call