I was looking into this recently and while I didn't find a great analysis, the impression I got was that financialization of the economy is a big part of this.
There are tons of tax benefits for owning land and for many of them you don't even need to produce anything or even have a working farm. You just need to own eligible land. Combine this with the fact that farmers are often capital poor so a lot of farmland is leased from those that own it. We basically have the same issue that renters are facing in modern urban America but with farmers.
Getting the financial industry out of assets we can't make more of seems like the obvious choice.
There are tons of tax benefits for owning land and for many of them you don't even need to produce anything or even have a working farm. You just need to own eligible land. Combine this with the fact that farmers are often capital poor so a lot of farmland is leased from those that own it. We basically have the same issue that renters are facing in modern urban America but with farmers.
Getting the financial industry out of assets we can't make more of seems like the obvious choice.
https://farmfolio.net/articles/why-is-bill-gates-investing-i...
https://www.knightfrank.com/research/article/2022-06-08-why-...