Air Force Investigates Company that Purchased 55,000 Acres Near California Base
The United States Air Force is investigating a “mystery” company that purchased 55,000 acres of farmland near a California military base for nearly $1 billion dollars.
Flannery Associates LLC, a Delaware-registered company, has spent $800 million since 2018 acquiring large plots of land surrounding Travis Air Force base, just north of San Francisco, California. According to the New York Post, the firm has become the largest landowner in the U.S. in just five years, which has led to concerns that a foreign entity could potentially be behind the massive purchases.
An attorney working for the company reportedly told the Wall Street Journal that Flannery Associates LLC is “controlled by U.S. citizens” and that “97 percent of its capital comes from American investors — with the remaining investments coming from British and Irish citizens.”
According to a local news outlet, Flannery Associates sent a letter to Salono County claiming that it is “owned by a group of families looking to diversify their portfolio from equities into real assets, including agricultural land in the western United States.” The email also claimed to be purchasing the land to lease to different farmers; however, local authorities have “cast doubt” on the story. But the Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Office has not identified any one individual behind the firm after 8 months of investigation.
County employee Mitch Mashburn explained, “The majority of the land they’re purchasing is dry farmland. I don’t see where that land can turn a profit to make it worth almost a billion dollars in investment.”
Local and federal authorities have been left baffled by the lack of information available to understand who is behind Flannery Associates. According to lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, “The fact that they’re buying land purposefully right up to the fence at Travis raises significant questions.”
As of 2021, foreign entities own a combined 40 million acres of farmland in the U.S., which has caused some to question whether or not that threatens the American food supply.
