Sure it has.  The plutocrats have been stealing everything that isn't nailed down from both the North and the South for centuries.  (And if it is nailed down they go home to grab a crowbar.)  The only difference, this time, is they are using the crowbar on themselves too.

As to the second, actually there isn't.  There's plenty of land lying around but most of it (New Mexico, for one) is worthless for sustaining agriculture over time.  That's what is happening in the Central Valley and the Ogallala Aquifer regions; it worked for a while but now that while is up.  In theory some of the land (New Mexico, for one) lying around could be used in an energy-intensive kind of way, e.g., hydroponics, but that would require a complete turn-over in the agricultural work-force since the current - heh - crop of farmers don't know how to do it.  Problem: do you want to work your ass off for 10 to 14 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for about $20,000 a year after investing about a half a million bucks?  

I didn't think so.  I don't.  Nobody else does either.  And why few people are getting into high-tech agriculture.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre