By now, many Americans have probably heard the phrase “Agribusier” from at least one person.
AgribuSears, the company that owns and operates several of the nation’s largest retailers, including Walmart, is the biggest agribusiers in the United States.
Its CEO, Ken Langone, is a Republican who has become a prominent proponent of deregulation in the agribustry industry.
Langone was also one of the architects of the massive privatization plan that was adopted by the Trump administration in 2017, which included the largest privatization in American history.
Under the deal, the U.S. government bought more than 20,000 acres of land for $7.5 billion, a figure that could increase to 30,000 if the land is auctioned off in 2021.
The land includes a huge swath of farmland in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Lampron is also part of the deal.
In the past, the agri-food industry has lobbied for more privatization.
Last year, it filed a lawsuit in federal court against the USDA for selling the federal lands that it owned for less than $1 per acre.
The lawsuit also claimed that the government was violating the Constitution when it sold those lands to the agro-businesses.
Lampsons lobbying effort is being met with a backlash.
Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, released a report concluding that the agr-food industries have received billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.
Its authors cited “the agribu-food-sales-bill that was passed by the House of Representatives in 2017 and signed by President Donald Trump, and that’s what is fueling this massive subsidy program to agribuses.”
The report concluded that the federal government “has not provided a fair, cost-effective or timely process for the administration to determine whether a subsidy program is in the public interest.”
It’s not just the ag industry that is trying to pull strings.
Other industries are also pushing to sell off land.
Last month, the Department of Agriculture released a new “policy plan” that includes recommendations for privatization of a number of federal lands.
The government has already auctioned some land for less money than $4 per acre, and it is expected to sell other land for between $4 and $7 per acre later this year.
The new land plan is expected in early 2019.
This is part of a larger trend of the ag-industry pushing for more privatizations.
In the past several years, the industry has received a number in grants from the U,S.
Agency for International Development, which is supposed to “provide economic development opportunities for rural communities.”
The government is also considering selling the public lands that belong to ranchers in rural areas for as little as $5 per acre and giving it to the federal agencies that are supposed to promote agriculture.
