Land Access

We recently had a mid-season check in with Sue & Gary, the farmers and landowners of the property we are operating our first-season, small-acreage farm business on. For one, it was a hard thing to arrange. We live part-time in Chicago, part-time at the farm, all three of us working off-farm jobs. Off-farm jobs are a reality for small agricultural businesses, as the profit margins are nearly never enough to survive in our economy. Sue was able to retire last year, and fully vaccinated, finally able to see the grandkids and friends again, also returning to her many volunteer posts in the community - monthly meal programming for unsheltered folks, CASA work with families and children in foster homes, visiting folks in prison and helping them communicate with their families, navigate the immigration process and unjust criminal justice system. Her life is full and rich, even without the long hours on the farm. Gary may never retire, staying out in the fields with his head lamp on cultivating up and down the rows by foot, because he loves the work, which he calls an art-form, rather than a business. 

In the end, the meeting was just Sue, a note-pad, and us, because the rain was coming and the onions needed pulling, so off Gary went. It was a relaxed and tense meeting like two sides of a coin, not existing without the other. We are treated like family, with words on weeding feeling more like when your parent briefly lets go of the bicycle handlebars, and the soft realization that if we need help we probably should have asked for it before the thistle started poking our armpits. Yet on the other side of that coin, our situation is new, precarious and ever-changing. Our arrangement with Sue & Gary to farm within their fields is built from a long relationship between us and two farmers who are reducing their output, and a very short written agreement. With acres and acres of tillable land all around us in the Midwest, farmers are ‘aging’ out of their careers, and struggling to find the people to fill their shoes. Children who might take over have long left the farm, the price of land (always increasing) is too expensive to maintain for the returns on any food or ag profit, and development is constantly encroaching. In 2012, only 4 percent of agriculturalists were under the age of 40, while a third were over the age of 65. Considering the type of ownership that exists in the United States only makes things more difficult. USDA Census Data (c.2012) shows that 80% of land is owned by non-operating landlords, or not farmers, and finally 95% of all ag land is in the hands of white males. To answer the question, ‘how did you buy a farm?!’, which I’ve been asked perpetually this season, is that we didn’t, we can’t, and we may, probably, never buy a farm. The hurdles against young farmers are too many, it seems. 

We are incredibly lucky. We have the support and encouragement from our landlords. We have a cooperative and delightful relationship with them, no matter how our farming styles differ or how we get food to the people. And there are organizations working tirelessly to get agricultural land to those who want to farm, or at least keep the land available for a farmer down the line. Conservation easements are one of the most successful paths for aging farmers, so that upon their retirement or relinquishment of the farm, it can only and will remain in a long term lease that lets the land be farmed or conserved for wildlife. Land-sharing agreements are becoming more common, farmers creating land cooperatives to support small-acreage businesses all within the same property, folks connecting older (technologically) farmers to younger farmers is increasing the transfer of land, even with massive financial barriers. Ultimately, our time in Richmond does not have the security of a long-term lease either, but when the seasons feel as long as this first year has, every second we get to dig our fingers in the sweet soil or sway with the sunflowers and lovingly pluck our first season’s tomato, each day is a gift. 

Support the practice of getting farms to farmers who will steward the earth for future generations. Folks in Illinois include: Liberty Prairie Foundation, The Conservation Foundation, Openlands. National groups include: National Young Farmers Coalition, National Family Farm Coalition, Agrarian Trust.