There is no point in my trying to do better than this article:
Allison Arieff
March 19, 2008, 9:31 pm
Cows Grazing in the Rumpus Room
O.K., the planet is officially out of (or back in?) alignment:
American farmers are making money hand over fist while the hedge fund
guys are wishing they’d put a little more cash under the mattress.
Corn growers in the United States can no longer keep pace with the
staggering global demand for the raw material of corn syrup and
ethanol and so, seemingly out of nowhere, there’s a demand for more
farmland.
That just looks wrong on the page!
But it’s true. We are running out of farmland and some people, like
finance guru James Cramer in his recent column for New York
magazineurging readers to invest in farm supply equipment, are
suggesting — only a little facetiously — that housing developments may
need to be razed to clear the way for more farmland.