Better than gold

This is the first of a four-part series on changes to Iowa farming

The ownership and usage of agricultural land is changing in America, and Iowa is not immune.

The Warren Cultural Center in Greenfield hosted four guest panelists Thursday to discuss the Farm Bill as a part of their successful community speakers series.

The farm bill is a package of legislation passed every five years that has a big impact on farming livelihoods, how food is grown and what kinds of foods are grown. The bills also include subsidies or payments to farmers that meet certain criteria. Each farm bill has a unique title. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 expires in 2023.

The moderator, John Norris, was the former chief of staff for USDA, U.S. minister-counselor for agriculture to UN Rome-based agencies including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program.

“No farm policy is going to work forever,” Norris said. “I think it’s time we start looking at is that the right policy today?”

Norris said, since the 1970s, we lost more than 70% of farmers. “The top 1% of farmers get 25% of farm payments,” he said. “The top 10% of farmers get over 75% of all farm payments, yet we see devastation of rural Iowa, rural America and the farming community.”

The Iowa Legislature established a program to review farmland ownership and tenure in Iowa every five years beginning in 1982. The most recent survey, conducted in 2017, revealed 53% of farmland is leased, with the majority of farmland leases being cash rental arrangements.

“I don’t think this gets talked about enough,” said speaker JD Scholten of Sioux City. “Who is going to own our farmland?” Scholten is an independent farmer advocate.

“Iowa State University had a study that said in the next 20 years, because the average age of a farmer is north of 58 years old, in the next 20 years, we’re going to have one of the largest land transfers in our history,” Scholten said. “So who’s going to own it?”

The 2017 survey showed 60% of farmland owned by people 65 years or older and 35 percent owned by people 75 or older.

Panelist and Greenfield farmer Randy Caviness said his great-grandfather purchased their farm in 1917 and they still have the century farm today. “My son’s got it, I passed it to him,” Caviness said. “I told my son, you know you’re the last generation that’s going to be a family farmer. It’s sad. We operate about 4,000 acres. Moving through the 80s, we fought like the devil to stay in business.”

Caviness has been active in the agriculture community, having been involved in Adair County and State Farm Bureau volunteer leadership service, former director of Soil Conservation Districts of Iowa, ISU Extension Council service and county wind energy development group.

“What has land become?” Caviness said. “It’s become our asset better than gold. It’ll always produce something; there’s always income. You don’t have to guard it. Nobody’s going to steal it. It’s a hard asset of value.”

Scholten said this issue needs to be addressed in the next farm bill. “When land’s up for auction, who can afford it? Is it the farmer down the road or is it Wall Street backed corporate entities? Then you don’t even know if there’s foreign money that’s behind some of that stuff,” he said. “Foreign entities own enough farm land in the U.S. that’s larger than the size of Ohio and it’s rapidly growing.”

As of 2017, more than half of Iowa farmland is owned by someone who does not farm, of which 34% is owned by owners with no farming experience, and the remaining 24% is owned by retired farmers.

“We’re on track, I fear, that very few farmers and very little land in rural Iowa is actually owned by people who live in rural Iowa and operate that land,” Norris said.