Wall Street FAKE FARMERS are making Big Bucks

http://www.alternet.org/hightower-wall-streets-fake-farmers-are-harvesting-sweet-profits?akid=12328.294211.10cm4N&rd=1&src=newsletter1021859&t=11

these are soft-hands people, buying up farmland with billions of rich investors’ dollars, then tilling the tax laws and threshing the farmers who do the real cultivation.
For example, American Farmland Company — which owns 16 farms — is a combine of the largest real estate empire in New York City, two Florida sugar barons, a wealth management outfit, and the real estate brokerage arm of insurance giant Prudential.
None of these nouveau sodbusters has a speck of dirt under their fingernails, but they’ve figured out how to work the land without touching it and still harvest a sweet profit. The founder of this scheme says “It’s like gold, but better, because there is this cash flow.”
Cash flow? Yes, farmers are charged rent to till the Wall Streeters’ land. Then the financiers get a prime cut of any profits from the crops that the farmers produce. Also, the combine is set up as a Real Estate Investment Trust, providing an enormous tax break for the Wall Street plowboys.