Exactly, this is a re-zoning process not “opening a manufacturing plant”.

I can almost guarantee this land was purchased for significantly less because it is agricultural land as well.

States have plenty of reasonable concerns about re-zoning agricultural land into commercial land. The most obvious being that if there are spills or other environmental issues it could destroy much of the agricultural land around it. Needing to know past owners is to make sure a previous bad actor did not create a new shell company to sell to hide the real owner. The previous owner could have already been banned from commercial development due to the above or other issues.

The fact that the author is intentionally misleading this article shows that they are a dishonest actor and is part of why we ended up needing all this procedure.