Jessica Shoemaker (’05), Steinhart Foundation Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law, was quoted in a Flatwater Free Press article analyzing large Nebraska land purchases by a majority of out-of-state corporate farming operations, real estate developers and investment firms, and the impact on the state’s agriculture and local farmers (“Who’s Buying Nebraska? Corporations, Investors Grabbing Giant Chunks of Nebraska Farmland,” Nov. 16). Jessica warned that absentee landowners “can distort local economies and impair the health of rural communities. When an owner is instead an investor making decisions in a boardroom in Chicago or New York, we worry that those decisions might miss some of the local complexity and may not care as much about local impacts.”
