5 challenges to completing the Bob Jones Trail in SLO County
Stories by The Tribune journalists, with AI summarization
The Bob Jones Trail extension project has faced multiple interconnected challenges, primarily centered around disputes with property owners and funding pressures. Key landowners, such as Ray Bunnell, have refused offers for easements due to concerns over compensation, liability, and property impacts. Alternative trail alignments have been proposed, including a new route along Highway 101, but these designs struggle with safety and feasibility concerns. Additionally, the county risks losing an $18 million grant if construction doesn't begin by early 2025.
As efforts switch to a "bookend approach" bypassing holdout properties, community fundraising has emerged to address a $6 million funding gap for the expensive redesign, highlighting significant public and financial stakes in completing the popular trail.
The summary above was drafted with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists in our News division. All stories below were reported, written and edited by McClatchy journalists.
The county risks losing millions of dollars if it can't reach agreement on plans for the missing link. | Published May 22, 2024 | Read Full Story by Stephanie Zappelli
The Tribune filed a Public Records Act request to find out who is fighting the project and who is cooperating. | Published October 26, 2024 | Read Full Story by Stephanie Zappelli Chloe Shrager
The county already paid Ray Bunnell $20,000, but that was for one-time, limited access to his property for environmental surveys. | Published October 29, 2024 | Read Full Story by Chloe Shrager Stephanie Zappelli
Meanwhile, some property owners still refuse to sell to the county. | Published December 16, 2024 | Read Full Story by Chloe Shrager Stephanie Zappelli
Now, with all approvals and funding in place, construction on the missing section can begin in 2026, the county said. | Published March 21, 2025 | Read Full Story by Chloe Shrager Stephanie Zappelli
This report was produced with the help of AI tools, which summarized previous stories reported and written by McClatchy journalists. It was edited by journalists in our News division.
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Chicago Tribune
17 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
As labor costs rise, AI is learning to farm
A century ago, orchards were the primary source of income for Parker Flamm's grandfather and many others in Cobden, a 1,000-person town in southern Illinois. Today, Flamm Orchards is one of the last standing. 'Right now, it's pretty much just us,' said Flamm, a sixth-generation orchard owner whose primary customer is a Kroger distribution center in Louisville that buys their peaches and apples. He blames the mass exodus of orchards on the challenges rising labor costs and a shortage of workers pose to an industry where the standard is to do everything by hand, from pruning trees and harvesting to packing and shipping. 'For every dollar we make, you can safely say that half of it goes back into labor expenses,' he said. At peak season in June and July, Flamm Orchards employs about 90 workers from Oaxaca, Mexico, with temporary visas to do agricultural work. Flamm spends tens of thousands of dollars to get the workers into the country for just a few months at a time. The Tribune is launching a series of special reports analyzing the hurdles many farmers face in trying to be good stewards of the land as climate change intensifies. Experts preach growing a variety of crops as weather resilience and food security strategies. But Illinois farmers report that the labor demands of fruits and vegetables and the rising cost of that labor are deterrents to growing anything but corn and soybeans. While most produce must be handpicked from trees, vines and bushes, expansive and uniform rows of corn and soybeans cater to repetitive processes that are relatively simple to automate. Combines have been used to harvest grain and beans since the 1930s. Engineers are betting that, one day, artificial intelligence will provide a means of meeting the more delicate labor demands of specialty crops. 'You identify the fruit, reach the fruit and put it in a container. You need a brain and vision or you need a computer and cameras to see the fruit and complete the process,' said Yuzhen Lu, an assistant professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering at Michigan State University. Drawing on advances in facial recognition technologies and autonomous vehicles, Lu and his team aspire to develop an AI-powered robot that can recognize and harvest fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, Juventino Garcia Chavez, 44, has been working at the orchard from March to October for over a decade. He makes the majority of his income during these seven months, then returns home to his wife, 14-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter in Oaxaca. 'I miss my family, but I need to work,' he said in Spanish. Chavez learned about the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program from several neighbors who have also used it to secure steady jobs. As domestic interest in farm work has declined, specialty growers are increasingly reliant on migrants who enter the country legally with an H-2A visa. So far, despite the Trump administration's aggressive crackdown on immigration, it has not targeted this program. The number of visas requested and approved ballooned eightfold from 2005 to 2024, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Three local residents applied to work for Flamm Orchards this season. One quit after a day. The labor is physically demanding and the conditions can be grueling: seven days a week, rain or shine, under the blazing hot sun or in freezing cold winds. With little success recruiting and retaining Americans, Flamm said he has been forced to turn to Mexico to fulfill his orchard's needs. On an early May morning, Chavez was packaging strawberries in a warehouse, hand selecting the fresh ones and discarding the rotten ones — a relatively painless activity. His least favorite task is picking cucumbers, which requires him to bend over for hours on end under the July and August sun. 'It can be hard because we work in the heat and the rain, but we go forth,' Chavez said. The demographic makeup of workers on Flamm's farm is emblematic of a larger trend in American agriculture. According to the latest data from the USDA, 55% of farm workers are Mexican, compared with 12% of the entire workforce. Before recruiting H-2A workers, farmers must prove that they've made a serious effort to advertise the job openings domestically. 'We feel like we have some of the best help in the country,' said Flamm, likening the 90 workers he employs every year to professional athletes. 'Outside the expense of the whole program, we cannot say a single bad thing.' Farmers who use the visa program must provide migrant workers housing, transportation and a minimum salary called the adverse effect wage. These expenses are on top of more than $300 per worker in administrative and processing fees farmers pay to the federal government and brokers. The federal government averages farmworkers' gross hourly earnings collected via annual surveys to set this salary floor. The adverse effect wage, which varies regionally, is meant to ensure farmers don't outsource labor at the expense of domestic job seekers. But farmers say it's prohibitive. The salary for visa holders is $19.57 per hour this year in Illinois, whereas the state's minimum wage is $15 per hour. And this adverse effect wage has been steadily rising, jumping more than $1 from 2024 to 2025 and over $5 since 2020. 'It's really scary and unsustainable,' said Flamm. 'A lot of people look at all those hoops and expenses that you have to jump through and decide (farming is) not worth it. So (rising H-2A expenses) definitely play a big part in the decline in farms.' Fifteen years ago, the Flamms also grew 400 acres of zucchini. Today, they've scaled zucchini down to 50 acres and just farm it to fill the void between peach and strawberry season in June. They can't afford the workers needed to sustain a larger operation. Elizabeth Wahle, a commercial agriculture specialist with the University of Illinois, said politicians must face the reality that farming will become increasingly dependent on foreign labor. 'Short of us having a whole new generation of people who just really love working outside year-round, I don't know if that's going to change,' she said. As many worry about labor shortages, others are looking to artificial intelligence to fill the void. 'We're living in very exciting times for AI and agriculture,' said Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, director of the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture housed at Iowa State University. 'We're going to see significant progress in the next decade.' AI is already being used to scan fields for weeds and pests and then share that data with farmers to support decision-making. It's becoming increasingly good at making recommendations too, such as suggesting when and how much to fertilize, he said. The next step, according to Ganapathysubramanian, is having AI make decisions and take action using robotic limbs, essentially replacing human labor. These processes will have to be tailored to the unique care regime of each fruit and vegetable, adding a layer of complexity. Tomatoes need to be planted in mid-May and twisted off the vine before the first frost. Broccoli prefers chillier temperatures, so it can be planted as early as February and harvested as late as November, but the heads have to be hand-cut from the base of the stalk. Both can be frozen but should be eaten within six months for optimal freshness. In general, technology is further along for row crops because hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans are relatively simple to tend to en masse. Ag-tech conglomerates such as John Deere and CNH Industrial have also historically catered to the needs of row crop operations since they're such a large share of the nation's agricultural sector, accounting for $21 billion of agricultural production in Illinois alone. Specialty crops haven't received as much attention from corporate America. 'We don't have that kind of interest, at least here in the United States, for specialty producers,' said Dennis Bowman, a digital agriculture specialist at the University of Illinois Extension. He's leading a team of researchers training artificial intelligence to identify horseradish by feeding it photos of the root vegetable at different stages of maturity. Anything unrecognizable is assumed to be a weed, which activates a pinpoint sprayer or mechanical tool that targets the weed but doesn't harm the horseradish. The mechanical tool could be used to farm organic produce, Bowman said. Once the AI model is refined, Bowman said it could easily be modified to identify other crops. He expects this weeding technology will be on the market within three years and relatively affordable since his team is largely modifying pre-existing technologies. Lu, the Michigan State professor, said the harvesting technology he's working on is much further from commercialization. A robotic arm may, one day, be able to pick different fruits and vegetables, according to Lu. The team must first overcome significant challenges, including getting the AI to recognize a ripe crop under varying light conditions and developing a portable, powerful battery that can withstand long hours in a hot field. Farm labor is notoriously strenuous, and the migrant workers who are increasingly doing it are often vulnerable. 'The law isn't on their side,' said Alexandra Sossa, chief executive officer of the Chicago-based Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project. Even though they're in the country legally, H-2A visa holders cannot unionize under federal law and are not eligible for overtime pay in Illinois. Still, many rely on this seasonal work to provide for their family year-round. The five months per year that Chavez is home in Oaxaca, he picks up odd jobs as available. Flamm Orchards provides his steady income. Sossa advocates for stronger worker protections as well as streamlining the application process to reduce the administrative burden on both workers and employers. Migrants can currently only stay in the country for up to 10 months at a time and their employer must reapply to bring them back the next year, a process that can take months. The federal government should consider reducing application fees and allowing multiyear visas, Sossa said. Many of the workers Flamm employs have returned several years in a row. Chavez, who arrived in March, reported having no problem renewing his visa and plans to return next year, as long as political conditions allow. At a Cabinet meeting in April, President Donald Trump reportedly expressed interest in expanding the visa program, according to an NBC News report, including creating avenues for the approximately 40% of U.S. crop farmworkers in the country illegally to reenter with H-2A status. However, Sossa expects the president's anti-immigrant rhetoric and recent actions — including his recent deportation of several Venezuelan migrants in the United States legally — will have a cooling effect on foreign interest in working in the U.S. This, combined with a lack of domestic interest in farm work, could negatively impact American farmers' ability to get food to market. But, more immediately, the Trump administration's tariffs have sent shockwaves through Midwestern farming communities. Soybean and corn farmers worry Trump's tariffs could hurt their businesses. China and Mexico have historically been two of the largest consumers of Illinois' No. 1 and No. 2 commodities. Flamm, however, is in favor of the administration's strategy. Even though it means he'll have to pay more for foreign-sourced supplies such as fertilizers and seeds, he said higher tariffs on produce from Mexico will make it easier for his relatively small operation to compete. 'From our standpoint, he can slap a tariff on Mexico for Mexican grown produce. We're all about it, even if it raises our inputs somewhat. To stop the Mexican produce coming into the country for next to nothing is invaluable to us,' he said. On the flipside, he also wants it to be easier for Mexican workers to enter the United States. The old white house where Hans Bishop's H-2A workers lived is falling apart. Bishop, 41, grew vegetables on his farm in central Illinois until 2023, when rising labor costs and unfavorable lease terms pressured him to pivot. Today, he exclusively grows corn and soybeans. In early April, down the road from the ramshackle house, dry corn shot from one of Bishop's grain silos into a semi-truck headed for Kentucky. Luke Darrow, a 32-year-old from a neighboring town and Bishop's only employee, monitored the loading process from the sidelines. The corn was collected last year with a mechanical harvester called a combine and has been stored in a metal silo for months. Truckloads of this dry grain have been leaving his farm all winter, providing him with a steady income year-round. Bishop grows organically on the majority of his acres, meaning he doesn't use any fertilizers or pesticides, which are often made with petroleum. It's widely considered an environmentally friendly practice. But, since he doesn't use pesticides, he has to take several passes through his field with a diesel-powered tractor to get rid of the weeds. 'Then we're burning a bunch of fuel to harvest corn and soybeans, and to truck it from the farm to the elevator, and to truck it from the elevator to the end user. It's just a system that's completely dependent on a non-renewable resource,' Bishop reflected. AI, however, doesn't promise to be much cleaner. It demands a staggering amount of power. While carbon emissions from AI used in agriculture are yet to be determined, just a simple search query on an AI-powered enginesuch as ChatGPT uses 10 times as much electricity as a basic Google search. Trends suggest that even when it's ready, AI won't penetrate farming communities quickly. Technology adoption in farming has lagged compared to other sectors, said Adee Athiyaman, a professor of agricultural marketing at Western Illinois University. Technologies that use sensors to monitor field conditions and apply chemicals precisely where and when needed have been available since the 1990s, but a 2023 USDA study found that only 27% of U.S. farms and ranches used them. Bishop, for example, just got a GPS this year and all three of his diesel-powered tractors are second-hand: one is from his grandfather, another is from his father and he bought the newest used. For him, the biggest barrier has been cost. The margins on his 700-acre operation haven't been enough to justify the expense. The adoption rates of technologies 'increase sharply' with farm income, according to another federal study, suggesting that AI could widen the gap between small and large farms. Large farms could get larger and small farmers could get smaller as they struggle to compete, hollowing out the middle. 'Small-scale farmers don't really want to spend time and energy and money on technology, but technology is the way to go if you want to really keep up,' Athiyaman said. Flamm is ready to experiment. He and his family have seen too many neighboring orchards shutter as their own expenses continue to rise. 'Whenever the technology is there, it's going to require some serious looking into because if we could cut down on the labor expense, that would be huge,' he said. But Chavez isn't worried about AI taking his job any time soon. 'There are jobs that cannot be done with a machine at 100%. The hands of people are needed to be able to do this job,' said the migrant worker.
Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Crop insurance costs taxpayers billions but only helps big farms
For farmers who grow anything but soybeans and corn in Illinois, buying crop insurance is nearly impossible. Even an insurance agent couldn't figure out how to safeguard his vegetable and poultry farm against unpredictable weather and plain old bad luck. Ed Dubrick, a first-generation farmer, worked at a local crop insurance agency for two years as he was starting up his small operation. He wanted the same federally subsidized safety net for his grapes, raspberries, asparagus and tomatoes that he was easily selling to row crop farmers. But the bureaucracy was insurmountable. 'After probably two dozen phone calls and at least 100 hours put into trying to figure out what I needed to do, I decided crop insurance was too complicated for my diversified farm. It really felt like an instance of the blind leading the blind,' said Dubrick, a veteran who runs DuChick Ranch on 7 acres in Cissna Park, a small village 100 miles south of Chicago. Crop insurance is intended to support 'food security for American consumers and economic stability for rural America,' according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But it doesn't cover all crops equally. It's primarily used by farmers growing the nation's four major commodities: corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. And Illinois is the nation's No. 1 producer of soybeans and No. 2 producer of corn. Only 10 insurance policies were sold to specialty crop farmers last year in Illinois, according to a federal agriculture department census. Meanwhile, nearly 147,000 policies were sold to corn and soybean farmers. 'Does this mean that only 10 farmers in Illinois would benefit from (specialty crop insurance). Absolutely not,' Dubrick said. The federally subsidized program is administered by 12 approved insurance conglomerates who profit more from selling single-crop policies to large operations than multicrop policies to small fruit and vegetable farms. Half of the insurers are subsidiaries of foreign-held multinational corporations based in Japan, Switzerland, Canada and Australia. The Tribune is launching a series of special reports analyzing the hurdles many farmers face in trying to be good stewards of the land as climate change intensifies. Crop insurance is one of these barriers. As currently structured, it helps big farms stay big and keeps fledgling farms small and vulnerable. It's an invisible hand nudging Illinois farmers to cultivate land dominated by neat rows of corn and soybeans. But aggressive farming of only two crops has gradually eroded and depleted nutrients from the Midwest's rich soil. To compensate, grain and bean growers have become increasingly dependent on fertilizers and drainage systems that contaminate water supplies and reduce soil fertility, said Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford. 'The corn and soybean yields are going up but the question is, how many more inputs are we having to put into the system in order to do that? ' he said. 'Everybody sprays with fungicides now at least twice a year no matter how wet we've been because they just know that's what you do.' Climate change is a wild card that threatens to bring severe drought one year and heavy downpours the next. Farms only growing one or two crops also have less flexibility to adapt. Diversifying harvest is a natural form of insurance, said Anne Schechinger, Midwest director of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization at the intersection of human health and the environment. But, instead of working with nature, she said the federal government throws tens of billions of dollars at antiquated crop insurance policies that benefit large farms and insurance conglomerates. '(Crop insurance) is really keeping farmers on this treadmill of growing the same crops each year, knowing that in 10 to 20 years, it's very likely not going to be sustainable given intensifying climate change,' Schechinger said. Corn and soybean farmers work with a local agent to secure an insurance policy with one of 12 federally approved insurance providers. The policies protect up to 85% of the farmers' historic revenue or yield for a single crop against unforeseeable perils such as natural disasters and market crashes. The USDA's Risk Management Agency subsidizes roughly 60% of a farmer's premium. Farmers are responsible for paying the rest, regardless of whether they own or rent their land. And they never profit from insurance; they just recoup a percentage of their losses. In 2022, the government paid approved insurance providers $12 billion to subsidize premiums and another nearly $4 billion annually to administer the program, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In turn, these insurance providers pay local agents a commission to write policies for farmers. 'In so far as who's benefiting most from this system, without question, it's these private insurance companies,' said Billy Hackett, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an alliance of grassroots organizations advocating for federal reforms that support small to midsize family farms and rural communities. The profits have progressively been consolidated in the hands of a few. Over the last decade, 17 federally approved providers have dwindled to a dozen, following a series of buyouts by the publicly traded providers. Ten of the 12 insurers did not respond to requests for comment for this Jones, director of marketing for South Dakota-based Precision Risk Management, said the privately owned provider 'would not be the best fit' to comment on subsidies or the barriers small specialty crop farmers face to receiving insurance. Country Financial, the parent company of Country Mutual, which is based in Illinois, said in a statement from spokesman David Beigie that it supports crop insurance reforms benefiting farmers, companies and agents and 'strongly opposes' cuts to the federal programming. 'In the face of severe weather in Illinois and in other parts of the country, we work with farm clients to help mitigate risk and ensure they have the proper insurance protections for their farming operations,' the statement said. Country Financial and another Illinois-based insurer, American Farm Bureau Insurance Services, have ties to nonprofit groups made up of farmers and non-farmers that lobby for biofuel production, free trade and agricultural subsidies, including crop insurance subsidies. Several people on the leadership team of Country Financial have previously worked at or have joint positions at the Illinois Farm Bureau, which spent $120,000 lobbying on Capitol Hill last year. American Farm Bureau Insurance Services, also based in Illinois, is partially owned by the American Farm Bureau Federation, a national lobbying group that calls itself 'the unified national voice of agriculture' and sowed doubt that climate change was real until a few years ago. It spent more than $7 million lobbying in Washington in the two years before the passage of the last farm bill in September 2018. Last year, as talks were underway about the next farm bill, the federation spent over $1.3 million lobbying. The Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau, an advocacy group that includes eight of the 12 approved providers in its membership, has consistently spent $320,000 to $400,000 annually on lobbying since 2014. 'I 100% have a concern about it,' said U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, a Democrat from Chicago who sits on the House Agriculture Committee. He'd like to see more woman- and minority-owned insurance firms on the list of federally approved providers. 'It is a public-private partnership where the government is covering 60% of the premiums. That, to me, is a strong call to make the case for diversity, equity and inclusion.' Congress is negotiating a new farm bill this year, but previous legislation prohibits the federal government from making any changes to crop insurance that would lower the subsidies providers receive. 'It's not dissimilar from how the federal government hasn't been allowed to negotiate for lower drug prices through Medicare. A similar dynamic exists here in crop insurance, and that was a very intentional provision that was added in the 2014 farm bill,' Hackett said. Farms were highly diversified and much smaller in the 1920s, said Scott Irwin, a professor of agricultural marketing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They still would have grown plenty of corn but less soybeans. Lots of ground was used to grow oats and hay to feed the horses that did most of the manual labor. As motorized vehicles became popular, there was less need for horses. Illinois' flat land was ideally suited for mechanical agriculture: tractors, combines and planters. And, fewer horses meant less need for hay and oats. Field space freed up just as Americans' appetite for meat increased. Soybeans, an import from East Asia, were an ideal high-protein diet for livestock. It just so happened that they grew well in Illinois. A connected network of rivers also positioned Illinois to export grain and beans throughout the Americas. Railroads were built to further facilitate the transfer. Food processors such as ADM and Cargill set up shop in Illinois to be closer to their raw ingredients and benefit from the region's robust transportation system. 'You stir all that together and you get Illinois' comparative advantage within the U.S. and globally to produce corn and soybeans at scale,' said Irwin. Today, one would be hard-pressed to find a rural town in Illinois where a tall silo can't be seen beyond acres of open field. Crop insurance has kept Illinois committed to these two by Congress in the late 1930s in response to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, crop insurance was intended to reduce the need for ad hoc disaster spending. In recent years, however, it has become a near-constant form of disaster spending. The top five weather-related losses resulted in over $118.7 billion in payouts nationally from 2001 to 2022, according to the Environmental Working Group. But, crop insurance companies rarely lost money because they have been allowed to assign higher risk policies to the federal government. The only year crop insurance companies did not profit was 2012, when extreme drought ravaged the majority of the country. Payouts in Illinois topped $3.5 billion. Droughts are anticipated to become increasingly common between intense storms as climate change makes Illinois significantly warmer and wetter. So far, the higher temperatures have been concentrated in the winter and at night. This has made growing seasons longer, actually giving corn and soybean farmers more flexibility. It's also much easier to deal with too much water via drainage systems than the total lack of water that growing regions in the American Southwest are facing. 'We're more resilient, not necessarily because of measures that have been put in place, but because of a little bit of fortune in where we live,' said Ford, the Illinois state climatologist. Warmer, wetter conditions do, however, increase the prevalence of pests and bacteria, and a 2022 USDA report encouraged Illinois farmers to begin planting crops that are better suited for heat and water stress such as okra and peppers. But the consequences of climate change have yet to truly be felt on Illinois farms. 'With (fertilizers, pesticides) and the proliferation of crop insurance, the non-climate pieces of agriculture are crafted such that the climate risk we do face in the Midwest is subsidized,' Ford said. It may even shield farmers from having to think about climate change, he suggested. He has noticed that specialty crop farmers tend to be more keyed into the impacts of climate change and resilience strategies because their crop insurance systems are less robust. While farmers who grow relatively small amounts of lots of different crops, instead of just corn and soybeans, can technically buy a special plan instituted in 2014 called whole farm revenue protection, it's not well-known or easily accessible. Only 9% of specialty crop farms nationwide were insured in 2022 compared with 62% of row crop farms, according to federal agriculture department data. Dubrick was one of several diversified farmers the Tribune spoke to who explored the whole farm revenue protection plan for his vegetables and poultry but decided it was too much of a bureaucratic nightmare. He would have had to submit meticulous expense reports for every crop he grew, a cumbersome task that takes farmers' attention away from the field. 'Farming is where I find my solace and enjoyment,' Dubrick said on an overcast afternoon in early April. Dubrick's home and farm are across the street from the former home and farm of a local man he looked up to like a grandfather, who sparked his love of farming and is the namesake of his 1-year-old son, Calvin. Today, he makes all his financial decisions with his wife Lindsey, son Calvin and 3-year-old daughter Evelyn in mind. A plan that offered security while he grew his operation would be attractive, Dubrick said. In the early years, he aspired to triple his revenue to support this growing family. But whole farm revenue protection plans would only let him assume up to a 35% increase in his revenue compared to the previous year. It wouldn't be enough. 'If I knew I had a floor of what I was going to get any given year (like grain farmers), I would be more apt to invest in infrastructure and scale up more efficiencies,' said Dubrick. Many farmers don't even know about whole farm protection. Only seven of the nearly 1,600 agents who sell crop insurance in Illinois are licensed to sell whole farm plans, according to a Tribune analysis of federal agriculture department data. Agents aren't incentivized to sell whole farm plans because the 12 insurance companies pay them based on the amount of the premium they secure. It takes more time to tailor coverage to small, multi-crop farms that will inevitably pay lower premiums to insurance companies. Democrats on Capitol Hill introduced legislation in 2023 to subsidize insurance companies based on the complexity of a policy rather than the size. It would provide funds to train insurance agents on how to write whole farm policies. The legislation was intended to push insurance companies to give agents more commission for selling whole farm revenue protection plans, encouraging a safety net for small diversified farms. But the bill, called the Whole Farm Revenue Protection Program Improvement Act, didn't go anywhere. Instead, the largest 2% of policies account for over 36% — or $759 million — of the subsidies given to insurance conglomerates. So, when the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency posted an open call for 'insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse related to the US Department of Agriculture' on Elon Musk's X in mid-February, Schechinger decided to make a suggestion. She took to BlueSky, an X competitor: 'how about the $2B taxpayers send to private crop insurance companies/agents each year just to operate the program?' The government paid $2.2 billion in administrative and operating subsidies to crop insurance providers in 2022. It doled out another $1.5 billion in underwriting gains, which equal the difference between the premiums collected and losses paid out. 'I think (crop insurance) should be on DOGE's hit list, but not the money that's going to farmers,' Schechinger told the Tribune later that day. The USDA did not respond to requests for comment. If the government were interested in reining in insurance company profits, Schechinger said it could implement changes to the public-private partnership in the next farm bill. The comprehensive package of legislation that dictates agriculture policy is supposed to be updated every five years, but the bill that the country is operating under expired in 2023. A gridlocked Congress gave it two one-year extensions. The new expiration date is Sept. 30. Senate Democrats included the Whole Farm Revenue Protection Program Improvement Act in their latest farm bill framework. Meanwhile, a competing farm bill introduced by House Republicans sidestepped the issue. U.S. Rep. Eric Sorenson, a former meteorologist who represents parts of north and central Illinois, was one of four Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee who voted in favor of the Republican bill. His office did not respond to requests for comment. Neither the House Republican nor Senate Democrat proposals sought to rein in the insurance companies' claim to taxpayer dollars. 'The (National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition) doesn't have a policy that advocates blowing up the public-private partnership because of just how radical that is,' said Hackett, the coalition's policy specialist. 'You don't touch it.' Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Senate Agriculture Committee member, had once championed a bill that would reduce crop insurance premium support for top-earning farmers. Instead of subsidizing 60% of the policy, the federal government would subsidize 45%. He abandoned the proposal, which came to be nicknamed 'the Durbin amendment,' in the latest farm bill negotiations after it failed to garner enough votes to include it in the two earlier farm bills. The senator and his team declined to comment on the matter when approached by the Tribune in April shortly before he announced his intent to retire. However, in recent months, his team shifted its attention from high-earning farmers to the impact of climate change related losses on the crop insurance industry. Durbin met with the Illinois Corn Growers Association in March to discuss how to insulate Illinois from premium hikes as southern states see more crop failures and file more claims. Crop insurance companies are already strategizing how to minimize their losses as climate change intensifies. Since they receive federal subsidies, they cannot withdraw from markets as easily as home insurance providers have in fire-, hurricane- and flood-prone areas. Last year, the federal government blocked insurance providers' attempts to pull out of West Texas, a region that's been scorched by heat and drought. 'This may be the first proverbial canary in the coal mine,' said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of agricultural policy at the U. of I. and an Agriculture Department appointee under the Obama administration. 'It's not an imminent collapse, but it is indicative of a very real, big and growing problem. Why are we insuring areas that cannot produce a crop year in and year out? I think that's a real challenge for the system.' As West Texas and other regions start feeling the impacts of climate change more intensively, premiums could rise nationwide. States like Illinois, which aren't anticipated to experience as intense extremes, may decide crop insurance isn't worth it for them, leaving only those in high-risk areas buying policies. This, Coppess warns, could be how the crop insurance industry comes tumbling down. The USDA did not respond to requests for comment, nor did U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth or Reps. Mike Bost, Nikki Budzinski and Mary Miller, who represent Illinois on the House Agriculture Committee. Meanwhile, without crop insurance, diversified farmers in the Midwest like Dubrick have gotten creative with nature. When a drought hit in summer 2023 and he lost nearly half of the revenue he was expecting for May through July, he was able to recoup some of his losses by pivoting to crops in other growing seasons. Corn and soybeans, on the other hand, have one optimal planting and harvesting window per year. Last year, Dubrick planted over 30 different crops to ensure he was prepared for whatever weather came his way. 'Peas like cool weather, but tomatoes and peppers want warm weather, and peppers do really well in drought. Tomatoes do better with some more moisture,' he said. 'The diversity is my insurance.' But Dubrick would feel more secure if there was a form of crop insurance that worked for him. 'Just point-blank honesty, the revenue safety net that we've leaned on the most is that my wife and I both have off-farm jobs,' Dubrick said. 'We can't lean into the farm because there's just too much unknown. Some years, I could be full time on the farm, and then the next year I would go bankrupt.'
Chicago Tribune
01-06-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Who owns most of the farmland in Illinois? Not farmers.
Surrounded by rows of soybeans and corn, Hans Bishop's farm in central Illinois was an anomaly. He grew kale, peppers, eggplants and radishes, selling to Whole Foods from June through October and to local restaurants, grocers and families year-round. The vegetable farm was born in 2009 on a quarter acre rented to him by his father, a row crop farmer. After spending a decade in the corporate world, Bishop was inspired by documentaries such as 'Fresh' and 'Food, Inc.' that scrutinized conventional farming. He returned to the fields with aspirations to farm differently. The fresh produce Bishop grew landed directly on chopping boards and dinner plates. It wasn't being funneled into gasoline tanks, ultra-processed foods or livestock feed troughs — the most common destinations for Illinois' leading agricultural products, soybeans and corn. In less than a decade, his operation in Logan County had expanded to 80 acres. It was becoming what progressive food movements celebrate as 'sustainable.' But he couldn't keep it going. Bishop and his wife Katie spent countless hours on marketing, had to rely on hired labor and couldn't access the federally subsidized safety nets available to commodity now 41, phased out his flourishing vegetable enterprise after his father abruptly retired in 2019, leaving him to take over the family bean and grain operation. Part of the land — 120 of the nearly 700 acres — is rented from a family who owns multiple farm properties and wants their fields weed-free with perfectly straight grids of crops, a deep-rooted tradition among Midwestern farming communities. 'They want that land to be clean corn and soybeans,' Bishop said. Before the restrictions, his father was growing organic corn and soybeans on part of the field and letting Bishop grow vegetables on the rest. Now, to keep the fields to the owner's standards, Bishop has had to forgo vegetables and use pesticides and fertilizers, which can pollute nearby water sources and degrade soil health over time. Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land, according to data from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management, a nonprofit association that helps farmers make management decisions. The rest is leased to farmers by individuals, family trusts and, increasingly, businesses. The Tribune is launching a series of special reports analyzing the hurdles many farmers face in trying to be good stewards of the land as climate change intensifies. Among the challenges are fewer opportunities for farmers — and would-be farmers — to own their land. Neither the state nor the federal government maintains a centralized database of farmland ownership. The data is recorded by counties, with varying levels of detail. Some — such as Sangamon and Edgar counties — do not keep digital copies of older records. The Tribune analyzed over 3.7 million acres of farmland in 10 counties with the most fertile soils, highest cash rents in 2024 and available historical data. It found that over 1 in 5 acres are owned by business entities — organizations with LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP and LLP tags. This is an almost 170% increase since 2005. In the same 20-year window, farmland owned by businesses with out-of-state mailing addresses increased by nearly 250%. These acres are not necessarily owned by large conglomerates and investment firms. Corporate structures are also attractive vehicles for family businesses because they offer tax benefits and externalize losses. But, farmland is becoming a more attractive investment option as the historically fertile ground in the American West dries up. 'Water availability threatens farmland in the Central Valley (of California) far more than what the next 20 years of climate change will bring to Illinois,' said Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford. Average farmland rents in Illinois have already outstripped the inflation rate, more than doubling from $129 to $269 per acre per year from 2005 to 2024. '(The rising price of land) just makes it really hard for anyone who's not a corporation or doesn't have that capital on hand to actually invest in that farmland,' said University of Illinois agricultural economist Brittney Kay Goodrich. There are few guardrails to abate a corporate takeover. Illinois is one of the only states in the Corn Belt that doesn't place restrictions on corporate purchases of farmland. Short-term leases also disincentivize farmers from growing anything but corn and soybeans the traditional way, according to Goodrich's colleague Gary Schnitkey. The market for fruits and vegetables is small in Illinois' grain- and bean-dominated agricultural sector. And it often takes a few years of additional expenses and reduced yields to realize the benefits of soil health practices, such as planting cover crops, reducing tillage and limiting fertilizer use. Farmers reported being more likely to adopt conservation practices on land they owned. While land management was once about safeguarding an inheritance for the next generation, it's now a matter of paying rent in a market where farmland has become an increasingly competitive asset to secure. Concerns over simply holding on to land from one year to the next eclipse long-term thinking about the stability of the nation's food supply. Over 80% of Illinois' 26.3 million acres of farmland is dedicated to corn and soybeans. Meanwhile, climate change is accelerating water scarcity in the Central Valley and Southwest, the two regions responsible for most domestically grown fruits and vegetables. 'I don't like the fact that there's so much corn and soybeans in the Midwest,' said Bishop. 'But, to some degree, I was just like, why make it harder on myself and fight the system?' Illinois' nutrient-rich soil — colloquially called 'black dirt' — and relative abundance of water have been catching the attention of investors. At the moment, no one person or business has a dominant stake in the state's millions of acres of farmland. The top 10 landowners collectively hold just under 1% of it, according to a 2024 analysis by Michael Lauher, the president of the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. Three of the largest owners are real estate investment firms: Farmland Reserve, an investment vehicle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Farmland Partners, a publicly traded company based in Denver; and Ceres Partners, a pooled fund based in Indiana. The University of Illinois is No. 5 with 36 endowed farms. Those who donate the land can choose to direct farm income to research, scholarships or other university initiatives, according to the director of the university's agricultural property services, Anita Million. The rest of the top 10 are families and business tycoons, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Gaylon Lawrence Jr., who also owns a string of Napa Valley wineries, and Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan. Representatives for Gates, Lawrence and Khan did not respond to requests for comment. The entity through which Gates owns his farmland, Cascade Investment LLC, is separate from the billionaire's philanthropic efforts in the climate and environment space. Farmland Reserve is the largest farmland owner in Illinois. The private Salt Lake City-based investment firm affiliated with the Mormon Church declined to share how many acres it owns, but Lauher's analysis estimates it has nearly 54,000. The Midwest's farmland is poised to become an even more attractive investment as it becomes a lynchpin for national food security. Warming temperatures and water shortages are shifting growing zones from Central America and California north. 'Illinois is incredibly strong,' said Paul Pittman, founder and executive chairman of Farmland Partners, the second-largest farmland owner in Illinois, during a 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call in February. The firm, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, states on its homepage that its 'core business is purchasing high-quality farmland then leasing that land back to farmers at the highest possible rents — thus deriving returns for company investors through income revenue and asset appreciation.' The grandson of Illinois farmers, Pittman began buying farmland in Illinois, Colorado and Nebraska in the late 1990s after success as an investment banker and entrepreneur. He included several of his own properties in Farmland Partners' portfolio when the company, which was valued at over $520 million in late May, went public in 2014. Almost half of the nearly 92,500 acres the company owns are in Illinois. Pittman, who lives in Colorado, said the company is continuing to invest in the Midwest but limiting its footprint in California — which produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruit, nuts and vegetables. He cited the availability of water as the primary factor. 'We will frankly continue to lessen our exposure to California,' he said during the latest earnings call in early May. A recent study using satellite imaging showed that the Southwest has been getting drier while the rest of the country has been getting wetter over the last 40 years. Jay Famiglietti, an Arizona-based hydrologist and co-author of the study, attributes this trend to climate change. 'When these places run out of water — and it's when not if — there are opportunities for the wetter parts of the United States to fill that food gap. So, huge opportunities for Illinois,' Famiglietti said. Vegetables, melons and potatoes are a $1.4 billion market in Arizona, according to the latest federal agriculture census. Fruits, tree nuts and berries are a $23.1 billion market in California. In Illinois, vegetables, melons and potatoes account for less than $180 million in agricultural production. Fruits, tree nuts and berries only account for $34 million. Meanwhile, corn and soybeans account for over $21.2 billion. The investors and climatologists the Tribune spoke with predict the Midwest's agricultural sector will only become more lucrative as water strain causes the West's sector to contract. None of the investors, however, expressed interest in bringing fruits, vegetables and nuts from the West to the Midwest. Rather, they all expressed a strong belief in the continued profitability of a soybean- and corn-dominated agriculture system. 'One of the reasons we've focused on the Great Lakes region and the eastern Corn Belt is because of the fantastic soil quality and weather patterns. The cheapest form of irrigation is rain when you're growing a crop,' said Brandon Zick, chief investment officer of Ceres Partners, which is Illinois' seventh-largest landowner with over 22,000 acres. 'We view this as a great safety net.' Eight states in the Corn Belt — Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin — restrict the size, structure and purpose of corporations that can own farmland to limit ownership by large investment funds. A Minnesota statute reads: 'The legislature finds that it is in the interests of the state to encourage and protect the family farm as a basic economic unit, to insure it as the most socially desirable mode of agricultural production, and to enhance and promote the stability and well-being of rural society in Minnesota and the nuclear family.' Illinois has no such laws. More than 22% of the farmland in 12 Illinois counties with the highest rents is owned by a business entity, defined as an operation with an LLC, Inc, LTD, Co., Corp, LP or LLP tag. Sangamon and Edgar counties were included in this analysis because historical data was not one-fourth of this farmland owned by a business entity had out-of-state mailing addresses. Layered corporate structures often obfuscate who owns the land: Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Department of Agriculture Director Jerry Costello II did not respond to requests for comment about farmland ownership. State legislators have yet to take up corporate ownership generally either. But Republicans in the Illinois House and Senate introduced separate bills in January to limit farmland ownership by foreign individuals and companies. Neither had progressed beyond a first reading. About 3% of Illinois farmland is foreign-held, according to federal data. 'It makes me nervous not knowing who these individuals or companies are,' said Sally Turner, a senator representing rural central Illinois who introduced one of the bills. 'I have a big nuclear power plant in my district, and I don't know who the landowners are around that area.' Rep. Chris Miller, a third-generation cattle farmer and grain operator in Coles County who introduced the other bill, did not respond to requests for comment. Similar bills barring foreign ownership of agricultural land have been unsuccessfully introduced in previous legislative sessions. While primarily worried about foreign parties, Turner also expressed concern that domestic companies could be driving up land prices. Farmland has traditionally been an heirloom passed from one generation to the next. Parents were motivated to ensure the long-term health of the soil and surrounding waterways so they had something valuable to pass down to their children. Investment firms prioritize profits. 'When you run a public company, even if it's an agricultural farming company, and somebody asks you, what do you grow? It's money. My ethical obligation is to make money for my shareholders,' Pittman, CEO of Farmland Partners, told the Tribune. During its May earnings call, Pittman said the real estate company had imposed 15% to 20% rent hikes on properties nationwide in recent years. Most of its lease contracts are three years, and tenants are required to pay at least half of their annual rent before the spring planting season. These terms allow Farmland Partners to raise rents often and mitigate the risk of a bad growing season getting in the way of its bottom line. Ceres Partners, the Indiana-based investment fund, has three- to five-year leases with tenant farmers. Zick, the chief financial officer, pitched it as a favorable alternative to the year-to-year leases many farmers find themselves tethered to. But there's a caveat. Ceres Partners' leases let it raise rents if the commodity markets are doing well. There's no room, however, to lower rents if the markets suffer. Despite largely unfavorable terms, farmers tend to renew their leases because land is hard to come by. Most tenant farmers with Farmland Reserve, Illinois' largest farmland owner, have renewed their leases for over a decade, said spokesman Dale Bills via email. The Mormon Church-affiliated investment firm declined an interview and wouldn't disclose how much land it owns or what it charges in rent. Zick said Ceres Partners only makes deals with farmers it intends to work with for years. And Pittman said Farmland Partners sees if its current tenants can pay their new asking price before putting the land up for auction to the highest bidder. 'We do not have short-term relationships. Only a percentage of our farms get turned over to the new tenant in any given year, even if the lease is up,' said Pittman. He insists Farmland Partners has a vested interest in the long-term health of the land and prefers tenant farmers who are apt to adopt conservation practices. 'When you own the asset, about a third of your return is your current yield. Two-thirds of your return is land appreciation. If you're not doing the right thing over the long run, the land appreciation side gets hurt and that's a bigger piece of the puzzle,' he said. Ultimately, Farmland Partners and Farmland Reserve both describe themselves as 'passive investors,' meaning that they don't tell their tenants how to manage the land. Ceres Partners takes a more active approach to land management, adding irrigation and drainage systems to its properties to increase land values and requiring farmers to maintain soil fertility levels. Goodrich, the U. of I. economist, worries that a corporate takeover by money-hungry investors will make short-term leases and exponentially rising rents more common. In turn, farmers will be less willing to invest in capital-intensive conservation practices that prove beneficial over time on rented land. 'It's going to lead to more of these mismatches in incentives,' she said. 'If (the corporation) is not providing an incentive to plant cover crops, why would a farm plant cover crops when it could potentially affect their yields and is more risky for them to do so?' Zick said Ceres Partners actively seeks to buy farms from individuals and families acting as landlords. He framed it as a way to let current tenants remain on a parcel if they cannot afford to buy it themselves, but he noted that they might see a rent hike. 'We knew the market for rent that the widow didn't understand,' he said, explaining why they have raised rent from about $100 to $275 per acre on plots they bought from older women who acquired the land after their husbands died. The majority of Illinois' farmland is still owned by families. It's been passed down from one generation to another. But, given that more than three-fourths of farmland is leased, most of these owners are not farming. This has made it increasingly difficult for young people with different visions for Illinois' fields to make inroads into agriculture. 'Many people only own farmland because they're related to settlers in Illinois. It's like we've created our own form of land gentry,' Mary Jane Oviatt said. The 28-year-old aspiring farmer was wearing hiking boots and jeans while sitting in an indie coffee shop in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood on an April afternoon. No one in Oviatt's immediate family farmed, and she arrived at the U. of I. for her undergraduate degree with plans to become an environmental lawyer. Frequent road trips from her home in Wheaton, a town 30 miles west of Chicago, to college in central Illinois inspired her to explore agriculture. 'It seemed desolate,' she said, recalling field after field of corn stubble and dirt from fall to spring. 'I had an instinct to save it, to make it green.' She immersed herself in farming through a series of internships with small diversified farms. And since graduating, she has worked as an educator at the Savanna Institute, a Champaign-based nonprofit that promotes agroforestry, a land management technique that integrates trees with crops. Her days are filled with Zoom meetings taken from her Chicago apartment and occasional visits to farms downstate. Eventually, she'd like to buy 50 to 100 acres where she can grow fruits, vegetables and nuts — 'things people actually eat' — but every day that dream feels more out of reach. 'Unless I win the lottery or inherit a lot of money, I can't afford to buy my own farmland,' Oviatt said. Her sentiments are similar to those of young Americans trying to buy a home. The median age of a first-time homebuyer rose from 29 in 1981 to an all-time high of 38 in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, the share of first-timers in the market has dropped from 44% to 24%. Rising prices have been cited as a driving factor. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski joined a bipartisan group of congressmen to introduce the New Producer Economic Security Act. The Democrat represents parts of four of the nine counties with the highest cash rent. 'If we are going to revitalize and strengthen American agriculture going forward, we need to take steps now to ensure young farmers can succeed,' she said in a news release. The bill, which is still sitting in committee, would provide financial support to farmers with less than 10 years of experience as the average age of the American farmer inches toward 60. The lawmakers want to include it in the next federal Farm Bill, a comprehensive package of legislation guiding agriculture and food policy that is long overdue for reexamination. Meanwhile, in Springfield, state Sen. Turner introduced the Farmland Transition Commission Act. The bill, which passed the General Assembly and is on the governor's desk, would establish a team within the state Department of Agriculture to study the barriers young adults encounter when buying or accessing farmland. During an interview with the Tribune in May, Turner suggested exploring possible tax incentives for companies that rent to beginning farmers. But it's not just young people who are struggling to keep up. Like longtime renters in the housing market, longtime tenant farmers grapple to contend with rising rents. 'Once I say I'm not interested in paying 10 bucks more an acre this year, they'll find somebody else who will do it and there's no chance of getting that property back,' said Bishop, the Logan County vegetable turned corn and soybean farmer. He's been all but forced to employ conventional corn and soybean farming methods on the 120-acre lease he took over from his father. The arrangement is coordinated by a farm manager on behalf of a family Bishop has never met. The manager sends out a new lease agreement every year, collects Bishop's money, pays the property taxes, takes his cut, and then gives the landowning family the rest. On his other nearly 580 acres, Bishop farms organic corn and soybeans, meaning he doesn't use fertilizers or pesticides. He learned from his father, who was an early adopter of organic farming. The 120 leased acres were farmed organically — and housed some of Bishop's vegetables — until the manager and landowner decided they wanted neat and tidy fields when renegotiating the contract with Bishop. If he wouldn't use chemicals to kill weeds and make the plot look like their neighbors', they'd find another farmer. On the organic acres, most of which he or a family member owns, Bishop strives to plant rye, wheat and red clover — cover crops — between corn and soybean rotations. Keeping a living root in the soil all year helps keep the soil in place, reducing the potential for dust storms like the one Chicago saw last month and dirty runoff. Biodiversity also helps the soil retain nutrients, making it more fertile over time and ultimately reducing the need for fertilizer. But these cover crops are an extra expense and often result in modest yield declines. The cost-benefit analysis isn't as attractive on leased acres. Bishop is less willing to do anything that might reduce his yields when he has to pay rent increases. Plus, with a year-to-year lease, Bishop doesn't have assurance he'll be on the field long enough to reap the benefits. 'You just keep applying band-aids instead of trying to build a larger ecological system,' he said. In this case, that band-aid is more fertilizer. Planting the same crops repeatedly upsets the natural balance of the soil by stripping it of certain varieties of bacteria and microorganisms needed to maintain fertility. Farmers who only plant one or two varieties must apply increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers to compensate for the loss of naturally occurring nutrients. Without varied root structures to trap moisture and hold the soil in place, those chemicals are more likely to flow into local waterways with eroded soil. 'Farmers, including myself, are seeing erosion take place in areas where we've never seen it happen before,' said Kris Reynolds, a fifth-generation corn and soybean farmer working over 700 acres in Montgomery County. Fertilizer runoff flowing down the Mississippi River basin continues to worsen, contaminating water from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. 'Crop diversification is needed,' continued Reynolds, who is also a certified crop adviser and the Midwest director of American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting farmland from environmental degradation and development. 'When you couple that with other soil health practices like cover crops and no-till, you can really maximize your efficiency and decrease overall nutrient loss.' He owns about a quarter of his land and leases the rest from his family, which he acknowledges makes it easier for him to adopt conservation practices. 'We often see that farmers who own the vast majority of their land are the ones who are more likely to adopt these practices consistently across all of their acres,' said Reynolds. Federal and state conservation programs do exist to help cover the profit gap farmers often incur when transitioning to sustainable practices like cover crops, but enrollment can be complicated by lease terms. Rob Woodrow, a farm manager based in Sangamon County, said none of the 38,000 acres of farmland he manages are enrolled in such conservation programs because they are an 'encumbrance.' Participation raises questions about whether payments go to the landowner or farmer, and since many programs are multiyear, they're difficult to administer on farms that are prone to change hands. 'About 95% of the time, (the landowners) are removed from (the farm) by several generations. They've inherited it from grandma or grandpa,' said Woodrow. 'They don't know how to handle the land. It's viewed as an investment instead of a family farm.' He said this is demonstrated in the way landowning families have steadily transitioned away from crop-share agreements — an arrangement where the landowner and farmer share costs and revenue — to cash rent. Under a crop-share, farmers and landowners split the risk associated with adopting conservation practices. Meanwhile, with cash rent, which is the basis of what Farmland Partners, Farmland Reserve and Ceres use, farmers assume all the risk. Landowners are detached from daily operations and guaranteed a fixed income. Investment firms are betting that, as landowning generations become further removed from farming, there will be a steady transition of land from individuals to corporations. 'An aging farmer generation, fractional family ownership structure and technological advances requiring sizable capital investment will naturally transition farmland holdings from individuals to institutions,' said international asset manager PGIM Real Estate in a 2024 guide on U.S. farmland titled 'Low Hanging Fruit.' Among rows of conventionally grown corn and soybeans, there are glimmers of an alternative being spearheaded by forward-thinking farmers such as Bishop and curious landowners such as Jim Polston. Polston, a park planner and municipal project manager who spent his professional life in Oklahoma and Oregon before recently retiring to Washington state, inherited 103 acres in DeWitt County when his mother died in 1989. Both his sisters, who also aren't farmers, inherited adjacent plots. With it, they each inherited a farmer who had been planting corn and soybeans conventionally for decades. When Polston's farmer died, he transferred the lease to the farmer's brother with little thought. 'We didn't know what we were doing. We were given row crops. It's always been row crops,' said Polston, who was living in Oklahoma at the time. But, after watching his former farmer fall ill with cancer and wondering if it was related to chemical exposure, Polston felt compelled to switch his farm to organic production. 'We hope for (our daughter) to inherit a piece of land that's not just garbage,' Polston said. He reached out to Bishop, who had gained a reputation as one of the few farmers in the area growing organic beans and grain, in 2021 and they signed a lease. Polston's decision to transition his 103 acres to organic farming came with sacrifice. It took three years to expel the chemicals from the soil. To make the interim years worth it for Bishop, Polston took a smaller rent payment that just covered the property taxes. He made no profit. Last year was the first year the harvest was certified organic. Because of pressures from weeds and pests, organic corn and soybean yields are typically lower than conventional yields, but organic crops sell for significantly more on the market. In the last decade, Woodrow's Farmland Solutions has also expanded its offerings to include organic farm management. About 4,000 of the 38,000 acres it now oversees are organic. This was similarly spurred by landowner interest. 'I didn't know much about organics at the time. The first thing that came to my mind was weedy fields and half the yields of conventional,' admitted Woodrow. 'It's a generational shift bringing the organic shift.' While the fields aren't those neat rows the Midwest is known for, Woodrow said yields have risen over time and weeds have been brought under control. 'We're using nature to help control the weeds,' he said with a touch of awe. When Polston comes back to visit his farm, his neighbors poke fun at him for having a messy field, but it doesn't bother him. 'I don't care if my land doesn't look as good as the next guy's. I know my land is getting healthier every year,' he Atkins is a freelancer.
