Southern Alberta is home to the legendary Mormon church owned Knight and Bar K2 ranches which sit on the Milk River Ridge and bookend the jewel of S Alberta ranches, The McIntyre Ranch. The Mormons have wanted to solidify their holdings for decades and would have paid mightily for it had it ever been offered...but it was announced today that the family who own the 22000 acre ranch have reached a deal with The Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited to preserve the ranch in perpetuity. Good on the Thrall family for doing this and keeping it out of Morg hands.

Oh, that's wonderful! Good for that family.

I was reading that the Mormon church is a huge owner of ranchland in Montana -- I think the church is the 8th largest owner of land there. To what purpose, no one knows.

Curious, is it wrong for the Church own ranch land?

ScoobyDoo Wrote:
------------------------------
> Curious, is it wrong for the
> Church own ranch land?

It's not biblical...

It's kind of the opposite of biblical!

It looks like greed when they keep trying to aquire even more...with US$150B in the kitty.

Don't they own a 300,000 acre ranch in Central FL; the Deseret Ranch? By St. Cloud? And I believe they are now in the process of developing it into homes...... So while it is not wrong to own land, I would say they buy all the land they can, so they can make a buck off of it down the road.....

It was blind luck that their ranch happened to turn out to be next to the upscale portion of Orlando. When they bought the land, Orlando was a sleepy orange juice processing town. A few years later Disney decided to build an amusement park there, and the town grew enormously. The well-to-do moved to the other side of town, away from all the tourists, and that side of town grew until it ran into the Deseret Ranch.

So LDS Inc started slicing off pieces of land as housing subdivisions.

That's not going to happen to their ranches in Montana, or Nebraska, or Alberta, or Brazil.

I think that the resources of a Christian church that are not needed for traditional uses (to pay the mortgage, utilities, pastors, missionary work, etc.,) should be used for charitable works. And yes, I worry when too much land is in the hands of large entities.

Is it wrong for the church have 100 billion in the basement of church office building and not help anyone? YES

Is it wrong to own land. No. But is anything LDS Inc does about anything but building the bottom line so they can throw more cash on the big pile in the basement.

The big, fat apostles get naked down there and roll on the cash pile. Like most old people they are very cynical, have lost their souls and are concerned about MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2023 06:00PM by squirrely.

Money (wealth) invested > employment & economic well-being.

However Not all investments are profitable.

Building a temple or chapel puts people to work, both site labor & those who produce, sell, & transport materials.

I want to say it was Grant that said farmland was a priority investment for the church and that someday the agricultural investments of the church would feed the nation in times of crisis.

Warning. Offensive language may follow.

One of my favorite J Golden Kimball stories involves him reporting to Grant about some farmland.

For context, Golden was an old rancher. He was also a member of the presidency of the 70. He was renown for is "cowboy" language.

Proceed at your own risk.

He told the assembled apostles, first presidency and presiding Bishop that the land was a good investment and was bordered by a stream.

Grant made the error of asking the old cowboy how wide the stream was.

Golden replied "well I can piss about half way across it."

Grant said "Brother Kimball you're out of order."

Golden replied "I know, if I wasn't I could piss clear across it."

Apostle X: Brother Kimball how are you doing?
J. Golden: I cant piss.
Apostle X: Come now Brother Kimball don't use such language.
J Golden: No, It's true, I can't piss!

I used to think prostate jokes were funny.

There's only one purpose. Profit now or later. It's what businesses do.

I think the church gets significant tax advantages to owning farm and ranch land. For one thing, they can claim is part of the LDS Welfare program, and register it as a non-profit.

On top of that, at least in the US, rental income from land that is owned outright by the church is not taxed. The only restriction I have been able to find at irs.gov is that the land cannot have a mortgage - the church has to own it free and clear. The reason for that is that churches were borrowing to buy land and then renting it out for more than their loan payment, and the IRS took a really dim view of that and got Congress to outlaw it.

I don't know if this is the case, but if it is legal, or can be made to look legal if you squint right, it wouldn't surprise me if entities like Deseret Ranch is owned by the property arm of the church, and then rents it out to Agriculture Reserve, the ag arm of the church, so part of the profits from the cattle operation goes to pay rent, making that much of the cattle profits tax free.

That might be considered self-dealing, but if there is any way that could be made legal, I'm positive LDS Inc would sniff that out.

And those reasons are why I think LDS Inc is so heavily invested in farm and ranch land.

I don't know about the tax questions, but once your portfolio grows to a certain size real estate becomes the best way to invest in a country's future. It's the same logic that informs Gates's land purchases.

The church has invested heavily in states it understands and has also invested in places that appear poised to grow from secular factors like the aging of the population and large-scale migration to Florida. It's a good strategy--assuming, of course, that the land is not vulnerable to climate change.

But hey, it's not like the church is led by prophets or anything.

Agricultural activities are seldom taxed at least hee in Washington state, IDK about property taxes which churches seldom pay, even for basics such as police & fire protection, roads & road maintenance.

Hello,

I am an anthropologist and researcher investigating Mormonism in southern Alberta. I would love to know more about LDS ranches in southern Alberta. Do you have more details about this you could share?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2023 04:14PM by Maude.

In addition to the aforementioned Knight and Bar K2 I believe they own a ranch further north in the Brooks area and I think they own a dairy farm in the Fraser Valley of BC. They also own 500 acres of irrigated land SE of Lethbridge that is rented to a local farmer.

C'mon, Ron!!

You're retired!!  This could be interesting, as well as informative.  Help the brother out!

and the Church owns practically the entire mountain range to the east of us all the way to Evanston, Wyoming. It's obscene.

ChurchCo has a recreational ‘ranch’ in Eastern WA near Cle Elum.
It was said that 2 or 3 Seattle area stakes but in decades ago, IDO if they deeded it to ChurchCo Central Command or kept it local….

At one time it was named ENSIGN Ranch, idk if they currently claim if it fits in THE THREE-FOLD MISSION scenario or not; DW #1 & I showered together there & also conceived DD #1…

What's the one thing?

That's what you gotta figure out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PunAKEccqyU

Thanks for sharing some good news, Lethbridge.

Wonderful to hear!

Now the answer to eternal burning question….which GA did Palmer have over a barrel that the Cochrane ranch at Hillspring became the Palmer ranch in the 80s….another jewel of a ranch…as far as I know Palmer still owns it

Interesting question!