A push is building against big investment firms owning American farmland, framed as bad for rural communities and good for anyone who wants land treated as more than a financial asset.

• Wall Street money, with BlackRock as the symbol, is buying up farm and ranch land and treating it as a return-generating resource.
• The complaint is that distant owners have no tie to the land or the country, so they run it for yield instead of food.
• Ethanol crops and wind turbines get singled out as wasting the best farmland in the world.
• Farm work itself is framed as something Americans should take pride in and mechanize, not hand off to cheap immigrant labor.

Outlook: Expect more political pressure to limit corporate and foreign ownership of US farmland.