Who Really Owns the Farmland? The Financialization of Illinois Agricultural Land
For generations, farmland in Illinois has carried a simple meaning. It was a working asset, passed down through families, stewarded by those who lived on it, and valued primarily for what it could produce. Ownership and operation were tightly linked. To own land was to farm it. That link is quietly unraveling. Across the central Illinois corn belt, farmland is increasingly being treated not as a tool of production, but as a financial instrument — an asset class defined by yield stability, inflation hedging, and portfolio diversification. Pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and family offices are acquiring large tracts of agricultural land, often with little connection to farming itself. “What’s changed isn’t the soil or the crops,” Hirsh Mohindra said. “What’s changed is the story investors are telling themselves about what farmland is for.” This transformation has been gradual enough to avoid national attention, yet consequential enough to reshape rural economies. Illi...