In 2013, the Chinese firm Shuanghui received wide public attention when it purchased U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods for a record $4.7 billion.

In an overlooked part of the deal, Shuanghui also acquired more than 146,000 acres of farmland across the United States, worth more than $500 million, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
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Indeed, over the past decade, foreign companies have been investing in agricultural land in the United States at a record pace, according to a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting analysis of USDA data. The data was compiled from 1900 to 2014 under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA).
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The database shows that between 2004 and 2014, the amount of agricultural land held by foreign investors doubled from 13.7 million acres to 27.3 million acres — an area roughly the size of Tennessee.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A monthly survey of rural bankers in parts of 10 Plains and Western states suggests banks are growing increasingly concerned about farm loan defaults in 2019.

More than 4 of every 10 bankers questioned for the Rural Mainstreet survey for January said they expect farm loan defaults to be the year’s biggest challenge.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who oversees the survey, says their outlook is being negatively influenced by tariffs, trade tensions, weak commodity prices and the partial federal government shutdown.

While Nebraska farmers face a number of problems from rising input costs, low commodity prices, high property taxes and trade barriers, the one thing they can celebrate is that can constantly grow huge crops.

On Thursday, the farm belt’s malaise deepened after the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted soybean exports would stay below their pre-trade war levels until the 2026-2027 season. That followed a report that sales of the oilseed in early January had the worst week ever. And things didn’t end there: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City warned that farm incomes were likely to have a weak start in 2019 and that credit was tightening at lenders.

“It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s not getting a lot worse quickly,” said Dan Kowalski, at farm lender CoBank Acb in Greenwood Village, Colorado. “It’s getting modestly worse over time.”

Some of the hurdles have been around for years. Consecutive seasons of bumper crops kept grain inventories flush. At the same time, U.S. meat production was soaring and dairies were overflowing. The supply boom meant prices stayed low for a long time, while robust demand kept things from falling off a cliff. In fact, farm income posted a 22 percent rebound in 2017.

Then came Donald Trump’s trade war.
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“The bailouts did help out some,” Lynn Rohrscheib, chairwoman of the Illinois Soybean Association, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television this week. “But most farmers, they just didn’t want that. We want to be able to grow our crop and receive a fair price.”

Rohrscheib said she knows of some producers who aren’t farming this year because of the tariffs, and that her family “took a $600,000 hit to our annual income” as a result of the trade war.
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Meanwhile, other Trump policies have also taken a bite of out of the farm economy.

A labor shortage , which some in the industry say is at least partly sparked by Trump’s tough stand on immigration, means employers have been forced to boost wages in the face of sluggish markets. On Thursday, U.S. poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. said it was increasing wages $50 million, year over year, to attract workers.

Early life, education, and career

Schiff was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of Edward and Sherrill Ann (Glovsky) Schiff. He was raised in a Jewish family, and moved to Danville, California, during high school. He graduated from Monte Vista High School and received a political science degree from Stanford University and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

After Harvard Law School, Schiff began working as a prosecutor in the Los Angeles branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office. While an assistant U.S. Attorney, he gained attention by prosecuting a case against Richard Miller, a former FBI agent convicted of "passing secret documents to the Soviet Union in exchange for a promised $65,000 in gold and cash." The first time Miller was tried, it resulted in a hung jury; the second time, it resulted in a conviction overturned on appeal, and the third time he was convicted.

California State Senate
Schiff was elected to the California State Senate in 1996, after two unsuccessful bids for state assembly.[8] He chaired that body's judiciary committee during his one term.