Who's Buying Nebraska? - 2

By Destiny Herbers, Flatwater Free Press

Early in the summer of 2018, a little-known nonprofit bought a 22,613-acre chunk of land in Garden County, Nebraska.

The next year, the nonprofit, tied to a P.O. Box in Salt Lake City, picked up another 3,331 acres of county land. It grabbed two more pieces on the same day in March 2020, adding 10,278 acres to its mushrooming total. Then, two years later, it added still more land in this county tucked between Chimney Rock and Lake McConaughy.

Before anyone really knew it, the nonprofit owned most of northern Garden County.

Not even the county can calculate the nonprofit's total acres, said an employee in the Garden County Assessor's Office. The organization simply owns too many parcels, through too many sales, for county officials to comb through the records.

"You'll have to ask Farmland Reserve Inc.," she said politely before hanging up the phone.

Farmland Reserve Inc., a nonprofit owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, has been quietly buying up ranch land in Nebraska's Sandhills for three decades.

The Garden County shopping spree, coupled with more buys in four neighboring counties, made the church Nebraska's top single buyer of land in the past five years.

The church bought 57,500 acres -- double the amount of the second-largest buyer -- between 2018 and 2022, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of data gathered by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln data journalism class.

The Mormon Church now owns about 370,000 total acres of agricultural land in Nebraska. It could soon become Nebraska's largest landowner -- passing Ted Turner, who has long occupied that top spot -- if church representatives continue to buy at their current pace.

How much land is 370,000 acres? It's roughly the total amount of land in Douglas and Sarpy counties combined.

The church sees its land buys as a force for good, an investment "to generate long-term value to support the Church's religious, charitable, and humanitarian good works," said a Farmland Reserve spokesman.

The nonprofit owned by the church also pays property taxes like any other ag producer in the state, the spokesman noted -- though an unknown amount of revenue is given to the church itself, which doesn't have to pay taxes on passive investments.

The Nebraska Farmers Union sees the church as another out-of-state corporation that arrives, drives up prices and makes buying harder for smaller farmers.

"All of the land that the Mormon church owns is land that individuals in Nebraska do not have the opportunity to own," said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.

Unlike other nonprofits, religious organizations don't have to publicly report their income or assets. The church has never given a total accounting of their properties, in Nebraska or globally, while amassing a fortune exceeding $100 billion (https://www.wsj.com/…).

"Even for those of us who follow the church closely, we're in the dark when it comes to specific church financial information," said Patrick Mason, professor of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University.

But in a 2020 nationwide analysis (https://www.truthandtransparency.org/…), a watchdog group found the church owned roughly 365,000 acres of ag land in Nebraska, and Farmland Reserve confirmed it ranches roughly that amount in the Sandhills. The Flatwater Free Press analysis of county assessor records shows that the church continued to add acres at a slower pace in 2021 and 2022.

The Nebraska land is just one slice of the 1.7 million acres of American real estate the Mormon church is now estimated to own. That 1.7 million-acre total is likely an undercount, said Truth and Transparency co-founder Ryan McKnight, because it only includes corporations definitively traced back to the church.

"They were able to go completely under the radar in terms of the largeness. Anecdotally people do think 'Oh, the Mormon church, you know, owns a lot of land,'' McKnight said. "I don't know that people really have a grasp of how vast it is."

LAYERS OF CHURCH BUSINESS

The Salt Lake Tribune estimates that the church's investment holdings exceed $160 billion (https://www.sltrib.com/…). Truth and Transparency's co-founder Ethan Gregory Dodge said he believes it owns at least another $100 billion in real estate.

The church's estimated wealth equals the net worth of roughly two Warren Buffetts.

The church uses both nonprofit and for-profit subsidiaries to manage its businesses inside a sprawling, complicated corporate structure.

A description of that corporate structure isn't available anywhere, said Sam Brunson, professor of nonprofit tax law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a church member.

"The church is remarkably untransparent about its finances," Brunson said.

The church likely originally purchased land in Nebraska through its nonprofit, Farmland Reserve Inc., to use a loophole in a Nebraska law that once banned for-profit corporations -- but not nonprofits -- from owning farmland in Nebraska, Brunson said.

Initiative 300 was ruled unconstitutional in 2007. By then, the church had already purchased more than 200,000 acres of Nebraska ag land under Farmland Reserve Inc.

AgReserves Inc., a for-profit corporation owned by the church, now manages ranches on Farmland Reserve land in Nebraska.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH ALL THAT LAND?

Rex Ranch, AgReserves' sprawling 365,000-acre cow-calf operation, covers most of northern Garden County and stretches through the Sandhills into Grant, Hooker, Morrill and Sheridan counties.

Despite its unusual size, the ranch has gone largely unnoticed for decades.

Hansen, for example, said he had heard rumors that the Mormon church owned "a lot of land in northwest Nebraska" but didn't know about Rex Ranch.

Dale Bills, a spokesman for Farmland Reserve, said that the Rex, and its employees, are very much a part of the local community. AgReserves hires ranch hands through public job postings. The Rex's employees live on the land they work and regularly participate in the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association and Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition.

Rex Ranch buys 90% of its feed, tools and equipment from local suppliers, Bills said. Employees also volunteer with local schools, 4-H clubs and at county fairs.

Austin Anderson, Rex Ranch's current general manager, previously worked at another AgReserves cattle ranch in Florida. His brother Tyrell, who attended the church's Brigham Young University, manages Ted Turner's Blue Creek Ranch nearby (https://krirm.tamuk.edu/…).

AgReserves also operates the more widely known Deseret Ranches of Florida, believed to be Florida's largest private landowner (https://www.tampabay.com/…). Other operations span 30 states and seven countries.

Produce and meat from the church's various farms go in two directions, Brunson said: to a charitable grocery store for church members called the Bishop's Storehouse, or to the open market where they're sold for profit.

AgReserves primarily sells products in the U.S. and abroad. On its website, it describes itself as "a preeminent supplier of premium-quality nuts and olive oil" and "meeting the demand of today's beef consumers."

DOES THE CHURCH PAY TAXES?

The short answer: Yes, sort of.

"We pay both real property taxes and personal property taxes ... just like any other ag producer or rancher," said Bills, spokesman for Farmland Reserve.

In Nebraska, the structure of corporations seems to work like this: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns Farmland Reserve Inc., which owns the land ranched by AgReserves Inc.

When AgReserves Inc. makes profit ranching it pays taxes. Then AgReserves pays rent to Farmland Reserve Inc., which pays taxes.

But AgReserves also sends an unknown amount of profit directly to the church. The church doesn't pay income taxes on that money.

Religious organizations are exempt from paying property taxes on land used directly for their nonprofit mission, Brunson said. That's why the church's temples aren't taxed.

But the church's ag land isn't eligible for that tax exemption since it's run by a for-profit corporation. Farmland Reserve is paying property taxes on ag land in all five Nebraska counties, those counties confirmed.

There's still a big difference between the Mormon church's agricultural arm owning Nebraska ranch land versus a small rancher owning it, Hansen said.

"As they say, in real estate, location, location, location. In the case of agriculture, it's ownership, ownership, ownership and ownership matters," Hansen said. "Ownership creates different kinds of relationships with the land, and how the land is thought of and managed."

The Nebraska Farmers Union opposes the church's investment, just as it opposes all outside investor ownership of Nebraska ag land.

"We're not going after the Mormon church specifically," Hansen said. "We'd go after the Catholics or the Methodists if they were doing exactly the same thing."

In fact, the Mormon church isn't the only religious organization buying Nebraska land. The Catholic Church's Divine Word Missionaries is 93rd in the Top 100 Buyers by Acre list (https://flatwaterfreepress.org/…) after buying 2,833 acres of Nebraska farmland in the past five years.

WHY RANCHING?

Former church president Gordon B. Hinckley explained its farming plans in the 1991 State of the Church (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/…).

"We have felt that good farms, over a long period, represent a safe investment where the assets of the Church may be preserved and enhanced, while at the same time they are available ... to feed people should there come a time of need," Hinckley said.

The church focuses on ranching because it's a good investment and a good way to prepare for upheaval, said Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of "American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West."

Stockpiling food and resources is a central part of Mormon theology, she said.

"Mormons are really big on being prepared for a disaster," said Dodge, who was raised Mormon. "They believe that before Christ comes, there's going to be a lot of disasters ... and they would advise their members to have a year's worth of food storage. I still have six months' worth."

Working the land was a form of worship for early Latter-day Saints, Mason said. They believed that God entrusted the Earth to humans to develop, and turning wilderness into productive land is a religious duty.

AgReserves ranch managers work with the state to monitor range health and protect wildlife habitat, its spokesman said.

"We are unconditionally committed to the humane treatment and care of our cattle because it's the right thing to do. Humane treatment of all animals on our ranch is a reflection of our level of humanity," Bills said.

Land ownership is also a solid long-term investment strategy, Mason said. Church leadership is not bound to shareholders or quarterly reports. They see returns in 50 years as just as important as the next five.

"Currently, we aren't looking to expand our ranching operations," Bills said. "Any future investment we may make in Nebraska would be row crop land for lease to local farmers."

Over the past five years though, the church has continued to buy land at a higher rate than any other organization in Nebraska. Mason said he expects the church "won't be stopping anytime soon."

Yanqi Xu contributed to the data analysis for this story.

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