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Twenty-five years ago Sonya
Salamon, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Illinois,
conducted a study that included a sample of 89 households in a
randomly selected door-to-door survey in a small, conservative
German farm community. The project took on a new long-range
dimension when she recently returned to that community to talk with
families who were still living there. Today there were just over 50
households surveyed who remain somehow connected with the farm. Many
are now elderly and live in the house but have relatives other than
children farming the surrounding farmland.
The shift from crop share to
cash rent arrangements or selling out completely has resulted in
fewer small and midsized farms being farmed by an increasingly
smaller number of Germans. "While in this community, locals continue
to farm the land, in similar communities, as operators retire,
absentee heirs rent to big operators who don't live in the
community. Consequently, their time and money are not spent
locally, which can lead to a decline in the community," says Salamon.
The increasing trend toward
cash rent has made it easier for big operators to get a foothold in
family-oriented communities because they can pay higher rent.
Additionally, a cash lease requires little interaction between
landlord and tenant, as opposed to a crop share lease in which the
landlord and tenant share the decisions as well as sharing in the
profit or loss. It's easier to cash rent to a stranger.
Through the interviewing
process, Salamon noticed one crucial theme that emerged was the
changing meaning of the land. "The data from the study done 25 years
ago showed a population who believed in the sacredness of the farm
land; family land was never sold and normally was farmed by someone
in the family. The people knew each other and looked out for each
other. They went to the same Lutheran church with services in the
German language," says Salamon. "But now, children often attend
college and are encouraged by family members to find a career
outside of farming. Because of this, heirs to the smaller farms live
elsewhere and are more likely than in the past to sell their
inheritance. There has been a drastic change over just this one
generation."
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this article]
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The farms in this particular
community are not dying. There is some consolidation going on, and
in this community it is primarily occurring among the local
families.
For four generations in the
community Salamon studied, parents retired early so that they could
give each of their children acreage. The young adults could get
started on their own farms after high school graduation and were set
for life, with a future on the land.
Today, Salamon says the pattern
has become that the elderly stay, while the younger generation goes
off to college or jobs in urban settings. Currently, Midwestern
rural communities are often made up of 25 percent elderly, whereas
the national average is 12 to 13 percent. Houses don't gain in value
and aren't kept up. The level of neighborly watchfulness has
declined. While this German farming community has not suffered
such a fate, some homes have been sold to non-Germans, and the
elderly for the first time are experiencing neighbors they don't
know.
Salamon also says that today
farm families who own about 340 acres of land are thinking about
selling because they and their children see this as too little to
farm competitively.
The community Salamon studied
is one of many in the huge belt of Germans living in a diagonal band
across the state from Chicago to St. Louis. "These are persistent,
conservative people who care about the farmland that has been in
their family's possession for four generations. It's their passion
and their security, and now they're thinking of selling it," she
says. "Twenty-five years ago any 6-year-old could describe the
history of every acre of his family's farm. Today's generation who
moved away doesn't have the same passion for the land."
Salamon says that the result is an aging farm population. "Farmers
over 65 have children who aren't interested in farming or even
managing the farm. They want the money and are willing to sell the
land to get it."
[University
of Illinois news release]
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