I wonder about the larger context here.
Generally speaking in developed counties you can't just buy any given farmland and rezone it ... at will, just because you want to. That's not an automatic thing.
Nobody wants a smelting plant to just show up next to their town and pop up because someone wanted to build a smelting plant .... or something with massive truck traffic ... that now goes through small neighborhoods / school zones day and night ...
Having said that, the bureaucracy described is pretty thick. And at least in the US there's plenty of land that is locally zoned in a way that could change from farmland to something like 'light industrial' without that level of bureaucracy.
But you need to seek it out and not just buy rando farm land and announce you want to build a factory too..
I feel like this story both could happen in the US, but also would be fairly avoidable too.
I recall a hilarious story about a cosmetic company who operated exclusively in China but wanted to diversity their manufacturing around a bit and bought a building in a historic district in the US. But they did zero homework and were astonished to find out that nobody wanted trucks coming and going day and night through this small town's city streets and 'staging' in the local school parking lot. The clueless CEO said 'this was never a problem in China'...