ROZENBOOM: Transparency needed to ensure no foreign, corporate ownership of Iowa farmland

Editor’s note: The following is the second of three articles going over Jasper County lawmakers’ priorities for the 2024 legislative session.

Although Iowa Sen. Ken Rozenboom is chair of the education committee, it is actually his work on the agricultural and natural resources committees that is driving his personal list of priorities for the 2024 legislative session, which includes taking a hard look at who is buying Iowa farmland.

Specifically, Rozenboom wants to address concerns regarding foreign and corporate ownership. While there there are laws prohibiting the purchase or acquisition of Iowa farmland from foreign businesses and governments, there is a strong feeling there may be some “very deep pockets” inappropriately involved.

With his strong background in agriculture, Rozenboom is greatly concerned about potential foreign investment in farmland in Iowa and across the country. He is also concerned about corporate ownership abuse. Again, there are laws limiting corporate influence on farmland, but he has doubts everyone is in compliance.

“For almost two years now, we’ve been digging into this with the Department of Agriculture, with the Secretary of State’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office,” Rozenboom said. “Not a new issue to me. But it’s not been very high-profile. We think we need to tighten up some laws.”

Currently, Rozenboom is working with the attorney general’s office to see what the Iowa Legislature can do to tighten up its laws.

“With the corporate structures and LLCs, we’re just not quite sure who is buying some of this land,” he said. “The real problem is these folks seem to have very deep pockets. They can blow any Iowa farmer out of the water. If they want a piece of land, their pockets are always deeper than our farming community.”

Considering Iowa’s identity as a predominantly agricultural entity, the state’s economy is very dependent on farming. There is also a culture of family farms to consider. Rozenboom laments the thought of corporations or foreign entities running traditional farming families out of business.

“They can’t compete for land ownership,” he said. “It’s just not a healthy way to go at all. We have some corporations that have farming connections maybe in Iowa, but they also have maybe manufacturing some other interests and they’ve received help from the state or economic development help.”

Then Iowa finds those companies competing with neighbors for landownership. Which does not sit well with Rozenboom. Especially if taxpayers are helping the corporation with their business operations and then they, in turn, compete against other Iowans. Rozenboom said, “That doesn’t strike me as appropriate.”

Ultimately, he added, what lawmakers are afraid of is foreign companies or corporations using “front people” to make land purchases.

“And we don’t know who is behind the curtain,” he said. “We don’t know that, and that’s the problem. There is a corporation ownership law in the books that prohibits corporate ownership. There are parameters and thresholds. But there is a reporting requirement where they report purchases to the secretary of state.”

While thousands of those transactions are on record at the secretary of state’s office, Rozenboom fears they are going into a file with no scrutiny.

“I’ve looked at some of those reports, and we see an LLC and we don’t know who is behind the LLC,” he said. “We don’t know if it’s appropriate or not. That’s a concern. Maybe there’s nothing there. And that’s fine if there’s nothing there. But we need transparency on this. Right now we don’t have enough transparency.”

WATER QUALITY UNLIKELY TO SEE ANYTHING NEW

For years, Rozenboom has worked on water quality, a somewhat polarizing topic. Several critics say the state has made no real improvements to water quality, an assertion Rozenboom has adamantly denied in the past. Although he does not expect lawmakers to introduce anything new this year, it is something to monitor.

Even though he has nothing new to propose in regard to water quality, it still remains a priority for Rozenboom. The state senator wants to continue to see progress and results, though he did acknowledge it will likely take some time to correct issues caused by fertilizer runoff from farms.

“We think we’ve made some really good progress,” he said. “But we need to stay on that. These are long-term issues. Whatever problems we have with, for instance, nutrient pollution, that didn’t happen overnight and we’re not going to fix it overnight. But we think we’ve put a lot of programs and funding in place.”

OH DEER!

An issue for Rozenboom that seems to never go away is the deer population in Iowa. Some years back the Iowa Legislature passed a bill whose primary feature was to call for a study of the economic and environmental damage caused by the heavy deer population, which was recorded at around 450,000 deer pre-hunt.

“We’re hearing so many complaints about crop damage from them but also raccoons — that population is out of control,” Rozenboom said. “There are always those things that are not real high on the radar of most people, but they’re real problems in Iowa out in rural Iowa.”

While a report of the study will not be ready until November 2024, Rozenboom said it covers 50 years of history in deer population.

“We value our deer hunting industry and the recreation that goes along with that and the revenue to the state, but there’s an economic cost to car deer accidents, there are safety issues. This study requires not only the DNR to be involved but I’ve also requested Iowa State Extension and the Iowa Insurance Institute.”

Other bills passed by the legislature in previous sessions changed penalties for illegally taking a deer with no antlers. Although the deer population needs to be controlled by taking antlerless deer and doing it legally, Rozenboom said the depredation program had not been very effective.

“So I created another January season — I call it a depredation season — to allow for the harvest of antlerless deer after all the hunting seasons are over just as a population control measure,” he said. “That’s already in place and that started last year. When we see the results of this study, maybe we can decide whether we need to do something more.”

NO PERSONAL TO-DO LIST FOR EDUCATION

In the 2023 legislative session, Rozenboom took over as chairman of the Iowa Senate Education Committee. As such, a great deal of his time was dedicated to legislation that affected both public and private school districts. This upcoming session he expects there will be more bills affecting education.

While he does not have his own personal to-do list when it comes to education, he knows the governor has a couple of initiatives that affect the structure of the Area Education Agencies. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds also wants to cover teacher salaries and expand preschool, something Rep. Jon Dunwell mentioned, too.

Still, Rozenboom is in wait-and-see mode when it comes to education bills.

“Rather than create the confusion of another bill, I’m going to see what comes out from the governor and the House on those,” Rozenboom said.