The field may still grow corn after a sale. What changes is who owns the ground, collects the rent and decides who gets to work it next year. That is the central fight over private equity and American farmland: investors can buy an asset, while farmers need a place to build a livelihood.
“Private equity” is often used as shorthand for every big financial buyer. The actual field is wider. It includes private farmland funds, pension-backed managers and publicly traded farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs). Their funding and legal structures differ. Their common move is to own land while someone else farms it.
The buyers are not all the same
Farmland Partners is a public REIT, not a private equity fund. It buys farmland and leases it to operators. Its 2025 annual filing reported about 71,600 acres at year-end after property sales. The company seeks income from leases and gains in land value. That smaller year-end portfolio is a useful warning against describing every institutional owner as always expanding.
TIAA and Nuveen are connected, not two independent buyers to add together. Nuveen is TIAA’s investment manager; its Natural Capital business manages farmland for institutional clients. Reuters’ 2023 investigation cited Nuveen’s report of 751,000 US farm acres valued at $6.6 billion at that time. Those are dated company figures, not a current count or an AFIDA total. Nuveen also describes its farmland investment business in its own materials.
Macquarie Asset Management belongs in the discussion as a global agriculture investor. Its agriculture portfolio shows how a large asset manager can own or manage farming operations. But its prominently documented farm acquisitions are in Australia. We could not substantiate a comparable US farmland acreage from those materials, so Macquarie should not be counted as a verified US acreage holder here.
Private funds sit alongside these public and pension-linked vehicles. They raise capital from investors, acquire land, then seek rent, operating income or appreciation. For the farmer bidding against them, the relevant detail is less the fund’s label than its access to cash and its ability to hold land through a bad crop year. For a fuller breakdown of REIT and fund mechanics, see our farmland funds explainer.
How big is the acquisition wave?
Reuters reviewed filings, company reports and interviews for six of seven firms in an institutional farmland index and found that, together, they owned about 1.65 million US acres in 2023. The index’s property count rose 231% from 2008 to mid-2023. This is evidence of substantial growth among tracked firms, not a census of every private equity or institutional acre. The six-firm figure is also a small share of the country’s total farmland.
USDA’s 2024 AFIDA annual report answers a different question: foreign persons reported interests in nearly 46 million acres of US agricultural land at the end of 2024, or 3.6% of privately held agricultural land. AFIDA covers reportable foreign interests in agricultural land, including land beyond working cropland. It does not count domestic funds as a class. Adding the Reuters and AFIDA figures, or calling all AFIDA acres “private equity farmland,” would mislead readers.
The federal ledger also has gaps. The Government Accountability Office found that paper filings, limited verification and data errors weakened AFIDA reporting. Even an improved foreign-interest register would leave the domestic ownership picture incomplete. County deed records and company filings can reveal individual deals, but there is no single public federal count of all US farmland owned by financial firms.
The price at the county auction
Institutional capital is one bidder among several. Development pressure, commodity prices, interest rates, neighboring farms and renewable-energy leases also affect what land costs. Still, a buyer able to pay cash can change the contest for a particular parcel.
Investigate Midwest’s analysis found that counties with producer declines of at least 15% from 2017 to 2022 had an average 31% increase in farmland values, compared with roughly 23% nationally in the data it examined. Its reporting documented investors paying above local comparables and young growers losing bids. That pattern is a correlation, not proof that investors caused every lost farm or every price increase. Farmland Partners’ leadership disputed that investors are to blame and argued that selling families deserve the best price.
That tension is real: a retiring owner may need the highest offer, while a beginning farmer needs a price that crops can repay. When the investor wins, the existing operator may continue as a tenant. Farming continues, but the tenant does not build equity in the land and may face a new rent or a different lease when the term ends. Investigate Midwest reported growers’ concern that three- or five-year leases give limited security. Displacement can mean losing ownership or a future chance to buy, even without an immediate eviction. It is a risk, not an outcome proven for every institutional purchase.
For a local reality check, compare asking rents with USDA-based county cash-rent data. A national ownership number cannot tell a grower what a specific lease will cost.
What policy can reach—and what it cannot
AFIDA is a disclosure law for foreign interests. Better electronic filing, verification and public data could make those interests easier to trace. Farm Action has urged USDA to strengthen collection and verification, while the GAO has identified concrete weaknesses in the existing system. Disclosure alone neither caps prices nor restricts a domestic REIT or fund from buying.
State land laws offer another lever, but many focus on foreign ownership, often through nationality or country-based restrictions. Farm Action’s policy discussion argues that domestic corporations can create similar land-access pressures and points to state approaches that also address corporate ownership. The details and exemptions vary by state; a foreign-buyer ban is not a general ban on private equity.
At the federal level, the Farmland for Farmers Act has been proposed to curb large corporate investors’ farmland purchases and access to USDA programs. Reuters reported on the proposal and its supporters, while Farm Action has backed it. It is a proposal, not a restriction already in force. Faster financing for beginning farmers, land trusts and longer, more secure leases address the purchase and tenancy problem from a different angle.
The first question at any sale is still local: who bought the deed, who will set the rent, and can the person farming the ground ever own it? Follow the foreign-interest data in the War Room’s Farmland Watch, then scan the Biggest Grabs feed for this site’s latest land-grab reporting. The first feed tracks AFIDA data; the second follows stories. Neither claims to be a complete register of private equity holdings.
