Re: “Think your home value is soaring? Talk to a farmer” [Jan. 21, Business]:
Regarding the escalating prices for farmland, this problem has been here for quite a while as small individual farms go bankrupt due to the sky-high prices of equipment, seed, fertilizer, extra labor, etc. Individual farmers are becoming rarer. Farmland is purchased by big agricultural corporations, whose owners live in the metropolitan areas. Many of the old farms and houses remain but are now occupied by tenant farmers. The sharecropper era has returned.
America is definitely returning to the pre WWII past of a wealthy, privileged elite served by hardworking peons just trying to feed their families and make ends meet. It’s not just farmers, it’s almost all of us — sad.
Nancy Pittman, Renton