When Leasing's The Most You Can Do
Wild Trillium Farm Seasons of Change article on the lack of land access
In This Issue
• Farmers Market Week Day 5 Market Lineup
• Land Access: When Leasing’s the Most You Can Do
• Free Regenerative Ag Funding Webinar on Tuesday
Farmers Market Week Day 5 Lineup
Thursday, August 5
Austin City Market, 5610 W. Lake St., Chicago, 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Barrington Farmers Market, 200 Park Ave., Barrington, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Daley Plaza City Market, 50 W. Washington St., Chicago, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Glencoe Farmers Market,Wyman Square, Glencoe*, 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Growing Home Wood Street Farm Stand, 1844 W. 59th St., Chicago, Noon to 6 p.m.
LaGrange Farmers Market, 53 S. LaGrange Rd., LaGrange, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Libertyville Farmers Market, 413 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Lincoln Square Thursday Market, W. Leland & N. Lincoln Aves., Chicago, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Low-Line Market, 3400 N. Southport (at CTA Brown Line), Chicago, 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
South Loop Farmers Market Prairie District, 1936 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Land Access: When Leasing’s Is The Most You Can Do
Christine Johnson is in her first year of growing at Wild Trillium Farm in Richmond, Illinois, which she started with lifelong friends Katie Szymanski and Emmy May. This is Christine’s fourth contribution to Local Food Forum’s Seasons of Change farmer series.
Today she discusses the difficulties that young, beginning and under-resourced farmers have in accessing farmland. This is a critical problem at a time when the average age of farmers in the United States is pushing 60 (according to the 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture). That census also found that just 8 percent of farmers in 2017 were under the age of 35, while 34 percent were over 65.
The Wild Trillium farmers lease the land they cultivate in Richmond, a northeast Illinois town near the Wisconsin border. Christine also noted that all three have off-farm jobs, which is a common occurrence: Just 39 percent of Ag Census respondents said they work exclusively on their farms, and 58 percent said farming was not their primary occupation.
Add in a lack of diversity (whites made up 95 percent of farmers in 2017) and gender balance (64 percent of farmers counted were men, even after USDA made a questionnaire adjustment to include more women as farm decision makers), and it becomes clearer that making land more accessible to more aspiring farmers is crucial if we are to grow the next generation of producers.
Here is Christine’s story. — Bob
We recently had a mid-season check in with Sue and Gary, the farmers and landowners of the property on which we are operating our first-season, small-acreage farm business.
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. In fact, off-farm jobs are a reality for small agricultural businesses, as farm profit margins are nearly never enough for survival in our economy.
Sue was able to retire last year and, fully vaccinated, finally able to see the grandkids and friends again. She also returned to her many volunteer posts in the community — monthly meal programming for unsheltered folks; CASA work with families and children in foster homes; visiting people in prison and helping them communicate with their families, and 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. He calls it an art form rather than a business.
In the end, the meeting was just Sue, a notepad and us; the rain was coming and the onions needed pulling, so off Gary went. It was both 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 and 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 (already high and always increasing) makes it too expensive to maintain for the returns on any food or ag profit. And development is constantly encroaching.
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 (see the end note).
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 are creating land cooperatives to support small-acreage businesses all within the same property; folks are connecting older (technologically) farmers to younger farmers. All this 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 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, and Openlands. National groups include: National Young Farmers Coalition, National Family Farm Coalition, and Agrarian Trust.
Regenerate IL Webinar Tuesday On Funding
Regenerate Illinois, a nonprofit organization, is producing a free webinar on Tuesday (August 10) at 3:30 p.m. on the topic of Funding Opportunities for Regenerative Ag. Margaret Krome of the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute is the guest speaker. Click the button below to register.
Transparency notice: I am pleased to accept the invitation to participate on Regenerative Illinois’ Leadership Council.