[upbeat music] Yeah, so welcome to the Land Talk Lounge, and welcome to this edition of the Wild Idea Podcast. And obviously, welcome to the Old Salt Festival. I think this is, like, one of my favorite weekends of the year. This is my third time here. I was here year one, year two. Um,
I think I was smart and stayed away for the deluge that happened last year. Um, but, uh, excited to be back. With the Wild Idea Podcast, we're having a lot of fun exploring the intersection of wild nature and human nature, and sometimes that means wild lands, and sometimes that means working lands, and we're really excited to talk about working lands today, as so much of this weekend's been about, it's about land stewardship, and so much of the co-op is so mu- so much about. But we're really honored to be here at the Mannix Ranch. We're gonna have a conversation today with Brooks Lamb for the American Farmland Trust. We're gonna talk about how we keep agriculture production healthy moving forward during generational transitions, during times of tumult, and, uh, I think it'll be a really great conversation, so we're super excited to have you guys here. Andrew, it's Sunday morning.
How have you survived the last two days?
[laughs] Oh, hi, Bill. I am, uh, I'm in fine form, I think, considering. This is, this is my first, um, trip out here. This is my... Yeah, thank you. Um, so I'm, I'm seeing everything through fresh eyes. I'm having a great time. Up until this point, my favorite festival was probably the Bill Street Music Festival, which I know our guest, Brooks, knows a lot about, too. Um, but Bill, you, you know, we had a great time yesterday. Food, fun, demonstrations, um, talking to friends, but you bailed on me last night, and things get a little different after dark. [laughs] Um-
I bet they did.
Yeah. They got way different, way fast, and I wanna shout out to our friend Jess, who kept attempting to turn my wine into sangria by dropping ice into it over and over, no matter how much I-
[laughs]
... I asked him not to please do that. Um, but I, I had a great time last night. I've got some gossip for you.
Can't wait.
Um, yeah, I'll have to share that offline. But of course, nothing is juicy as watching folks exit the sauna and jump straight into this irrigation ditch.
[laughs]
Which,
honestly, I'm a little jealous. I might try that after we're done.
It would be a good Sunday morning recovery routine, right?
Oh, I need that more than anything.
Sauna, irrigation ditch, sauna, irrigation ditch. [laughs] Well, that'd be a great way to recover on a [laughs] Sunday morning. Definitely the definition of Sunday morning coming down. Uh, but at any rate, we didn't, we didn't come here to talk about gossip, right? So Brooks, first of all, welcome to Montana. Welcome to the Old Salt Festival, and specifically, welcome to the Mannix Ranch. As someone rooted in family ranching and the farming ecosystem, what are your thoughts of this experience so far?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it has been
really special, and I mean, borderline magical [laughs] in some ways, right? So this is my first time in Montana. I haven't gotten to spend a lot of time out west, and, and every time I do get to come out here, I'm overwhelmed by the, the vastness and the difference in scale between the kind of farming that I know in Tennessee and the South and the kind of ranching and farming that goes on out here. So that's always fun to get to experience. Um, and, and I do love the "land is kin" phrase that is shared all the time, everywhere at this festival. Um, I think we're so much better off when we can think about the land in the same way that we think about a family member, our kin, or, or a friend. And if we can treat it with respect, and we can come to know it, and we can develop this sense of affection for it, look at the kind of stewardship that can be practiced. I mean, it's everywhere around us to just get to look and see this. So it was a nightmare travel day getting here.
[laughs]
But now that I am here, um, it has been wonderful.
Well, thanks for making the effort. Um,
I, I too got to have that beautiful transition of coming from Tennessee, the Southeast, to Montana, and it, it's so different. Every place is special in its own right. As someone who's spent a significant chunk of my life in Tennessee, I want to hear a bit about your home place. I have, I have a farm home place back in West Virginia, but I'm curious how your family farm formed who you became as an adult and the work you do now for American Farmland Trust.
Yeah. Well, thanks, Bill. Um, so my family's farm has been in our family since 1892. Um, it's a long time. Uh, now that ownership hasn't exactly been linear. Um, my parents, when they took over, had to buy the farm from my great uncle, who, um, wanted my parents to have it, but like a lot of small farmers all across the country, didn't really have any savings or any inheritance to leave his one child. So as my great Uncle William was in a hospital bed in Nashville, um, slowly dying of cancer, hooked up to all these machines, he called my dad and his son into the hospital room and said, "All right, here's what's gonna happen.
I'm leaving the farm, uh, to you," which was my dad's cousin. "You're gonna sell it to Ken," my dad, "at a fair price, and that's that."
And honestly, um, we got exceptionally lucky that that happened. There are so many instances in these kind of family transitions of land where maybe that's someone's wish, but for whatever reason, um, those wishes aren't honored, or other challenges come up that make it impossible to kind of actually make that smooth transition. So to give my, my dad's cousin credit, he did it, right? He actually honored that wish. My family, um, has continued our legacy on that land, um, and it's where I grew up, and it's, it's where I still call capital H home. Um, so we've raised a lot of different things throughout the years, from pumpkins, um, and some goats here and there, um, to big vegetable gardens and beef cattle, and actually tobacco. Um, so for those of who- y'all who are around Yesterday and got a chance to hear from Mary Berry. Um, my family's experiences are actually really similar to, to the Berry families. We raised tobacco until I was a junior in high school. Um, we raised it under the, uh, tobacco program that limited production in order to maintain high prices, and it really sustained these small holder agrarian economies, especially across the South and in other areas where they had this kind of parity pricing in place for their crops. Tobacco,
really complicated. Don't have any affection for tobacco products necessarily. They've killed three out of my four grandparents of cancer. Uh, but the way that tobacco was grown and the way that it was governed for a long time really made a huge impact on agrarian economies throughout the South. And it shaped my family, it has shaped me, and lessons from that crop and from growing up on my family's land in general have really helped make me who I am. So it's that place more than anywhere else on Earth that has shaped not only my professional work, but my, my personal calling, the writing I do, the teaching I do. Um, I owe a lot to those seventy-five acres in Marshall County, Tennessee.
Thanks for sharing that. Um, it's interesting to hear about your early years and of course, I know you matriculated from the greatest undergraduate institution in the history of the United States, Rhodes College.
Without a doubt. Yes. [laughs]
Me too, if you don't-
Oh, boy
... pick up on that. Oh, boy. But what I'd like to hear more about is your current gig at American Farmland Trust. Um, so there's more than three hundred million acres of American farmland projected to change hands in the next two decades. That's a crazy, huge number. Um, w- that like it's, that's just hard for me to wrap my, my mind around. When you talk with like a single farm family who is working through succession planning, maybe, how do you translate a number that abstract, that large, um, so that they can make a decision about something that's probably only two hundred acres or so for them, you know? And, and what are the things that families need to be considering probably much earlier than they're prepared to, to preserve the continued stewardship of their land?
Yeah, great questions, Andrew. So yeah, so I work with American Farmland Trust, a national conservation organization that's been around since nineteen eighty. Uh, we've got this kinda three-legged stool mission. We believe that if you take any of those three legs away, the whole tool- stool just kinda topples over. Um, the first is protecting farmland from development. Second is promoting sound practices that are good for the land, good for the soil, good for water, good for people, and the third is keeping farmers on the land. And this succession planning work really fits into that third bucket of trying to keep farm families and ranch families on the land. Um, so at AFT, I serve as our Special Advisor for Strategic Communications, which is a mile-and-a-half-long way to say storyteller. Um, and a lot of my storytelling work focuses on next-generation land access and generational transition planning and support. You're right, three hundred million acres over the next roughly twenty years expected to change hands purely because the current owners of that land will either retire
or candidly they will die, right? That is over a third of all the agricultural land that we have in our nation. One of the ways that I try to wrap my head around this, um, everybody here familiar with, with football, right? A football field, including the end zones, is a little over one acre. I think it's somewhere like one point two, one point three acres. So if it's helpful to think about this, this is like, you know,
over three hundred million, probably four hundred million, uh, American football fields worth of farmland set to change hands in the, uh, the next couple of decades.
For those of us obsessed with the World Cup, that's a lot of soccer pitches.
[laughs] Exactly. A lot of soccer pitches, a lot of football fields.
There's suddenly a lot of soccer fans in America right now, so yeah, they can relate to the pitch well.
[laughs] Exactly. So, so it's mammoth, right? And, and it is huge. And you're right. I mean, these farms are transitioning one farm and one ranch, you know, a couple dozen acres, couple hundred acres, maybe a few thousand acres out here, um, all, all individually at, at, um, at once over the next, next stretch. So it really is huge. And one of the things that we find is that these succession planning conversations are really, really difficult for both the exiting generations and the, the incoming generations. And because they are so difficult and they are laced with so many economic complexities, emotional complexities, um, issues of lifestyle and livelihood, all of these things mixed into one, people put the conversations off, and they just don't have them at all, or they say they'll have them later until all of a sudden, the exiting generation passes away or gets really sick. And all of a sudden, the heirs are trying to grieve the loss of one of the most important people in their lives and figure out what's gonna happen with family land,
and that's really, really tough. And then you work in issues of fairness with heirs, and maybe there are three children, and one of them, she really wants to farm or ranch, and the other two maybe aren't interested, but you can't just leave the family land to that one person necessarily because that's not fair to the other two. But if you leave it to all of them, the one who wants to ranch or farm may not be able to afford to buy out her siblings because land's so expensive right now. So it's this really wicked problem. We are coming up with solutions to try to help address it, but it is,
it is in my opinion, um, that how these farms and ranches transition over the next two decades will
shape the future of our farming and food system, and it will shape the landscape, literally and figuratively, of our rural communities. And another way to think about that is to frame it as, as a question, and it's who will own rural America?
'Cause right now we see a lot of the land that does change hands, and then I'll stop blabbering. Um, see a lot of the land that changes hand s- face one of three fates.
Either gets subsumed by a much larger, more industrialized farm or ranch that's nearby that's always looking to grow. It gets bought up by, um, institutional investors, private equity, venture capital that know over 30-year time horizons, the value of farm and ranch land actually outperforms the stock market, so they treat it as an economic asset to add to their portfolios and don't worry about its stewardship, don't think of the land as kin. Um, or a lot of the land is being converted to real estate development, suburban sprawl, warehouses, uh, data centers, all of these different things. And so when you're faced with those sorts of competition and you're a next generation farmer or rancher or maybe you didn't grow up on a farm, but you really want to get into agriculture, it's really hard to, uh, to step in and, and fill those shoes.
A- and is this where the land, um, transfer navigators project comes in?
Exactly, yeah. So we do have this national project called Land Transfer Navigators that American Farmland Trust leads. Um, it's supported and funded through the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Um, and we have about three dozen partner organizations all across the nation. They're all land protection groups, they're all land trusts, and they are training members of their staff to become succession planning specialists. So, so many of these land trusts and conservation organizations already have great relationships with the people who've protected their land through them, so they're able to leverage the trust that's inherent in those relationships to go to them and say, "Hey, look, have you thought about your succession plan? Who's gonna take over after you're gone? Yes, your land is protected. It's gonna be a farm or it's gonna be a ranch, but who's gonna tend it, right?" So this project has been really impactful. We've already reached over 50,000 farmers and ranchers across the country. We've distributed lots of micro grants. Um, we've created all sorts of new resources that can help families through these processes, and we're doing a lot of storytelling. Um, I'm doing a lot of writing on this topic. We're doing Q&As with our expert staff and our expert partners so that they can share their wisdom, share their knowledge and experience. And we've also launched a new podcast that tells these stories, and I'm really excited to talk about that at some point today.
Yeah, there's a huge difference between, you know, land transferring to another farmer, whether it's a family member or even an, you know, sort of industrial conglomerate sort of farming situation in a subdivision. I mean, I would know nothing about that. I live in the Flathead Valley. We're not seeing that at all. And some chuckles out there. Yeah, we're seeing an awful lot of agricultural production land in the Flathead being converted into subdivisions. Arguments right now in Butte and other places in Montana about land being converted into data centers. Um, a lot going on there, but I'm curious
what the bigger threat is. Is it, is it the loss of the land or is it just the sheer barriers for young new ranchers and farmers financially to get into the work? Like is... Are they equally dramatic barriers or, you know, which one is probably gonna be the holdup to continuing to see family-owned ranches and farms continue to thrive and flourish?
Yeah. It-- I, I do think it really is kind of a both answer, Bill. Um, when we see a lot of agricultural land loss to development, it makes it even harder for nearby farms and ranches to kinda stay in family scale production because the land prices drive up so much because of that development. So yes, if, if a 300-acre farm or ranch is developed, yes, that, that land is gone, but it also has this ripple effect that goes for miles and miles and miles in a community and impacts all of those other land prices and the development pressure that, that affects them. So, so that's a big impact. But yeah, I mean, just the sheer cost of land is keeping
next generation aspiring farmers from, from getting into the field. Um, and I, I wrote about this in, in an essay in The New York Times a few months ago. And I, I have heard... I, I go to lots of events across the country. I, I talk with lots of farmers and ranchers, and in those settings, I've heard a lot of people say [chuckles] kinda like wistfully or curmudgeonly, "Young kids these days, they just don't wanna farm. They don't wanna work that hard. They don't wanna live in rural America."
And that, that might be true for some people. There are some kids who grew up on farms who may not want to remain there. Um, but for most people, at least those that I know, it's not that they don't wanna farm, it's that they can't afford to, right? Um, and even for those who grew up on the land in agriculture, people might say, "Well, why don't you wanna carry on that legacy?" Well, and it's in part because they were paying attention when they were kids, right? They watched their parents and their grandparents struggle. They watched them work two and three jobs. They watched input costs rise and rise and rise, and they watched farm and ranch incomes dwindle and dwindle and dwindle, right? So it is a really tough environment right now to step into agriculture. But I do think it's essential that we try to start removing some of these barriers. One, we, we need continued food production. That's, that's clear. We need continued stewardship of the land. But I think it's really important that we help young people
get into farming at the right scale, because agriculture can be some of our closest societal connections to the land, um, when done at the appropriate scale. So there's a conservationist that I know y'all are aware of, but Wes Jackson in Kansas, who has this phrase that I love, and he calls it his or the eyes to acres ratio, and he says, "You need the appropriate number of eyes on any given piece of land to make sure that- It gets the care and attention that it deserves so that you can look out and see what it needs and then go do that. Now, the eyes to acres ratio changes, right? What the eyes to acres ratio is in, in Tennessee is different from what it is here in Montana, right? The scales are different, but the underlying premise is the same, is that on these working landscapes, we need people there to watch and pay attention and then tend the land with care and with love to make sure that we actually have this continued connection with the earth itself. So it's really important for so many reasons. That's more of a philosophical one. There's all the economic and food production and everything else that's, that's crucial too, but that really stands out to me as a, as a huge issue.
Yeah. As a, a follow-up to that, I, I love that phrase about eyes on the land, and eyes on the policies too, right? There's a lot of different ways in which to have income input into ranch land and to farmlands. Uh, I know you guys are both intimately familiar with working on the farm bill. Uh, but I think the more societal, societal eyes that we can have on those policies, coming from a family farm in West Virginia, as I do, knowing that there are conservation programs, and that income can be awfully important for keeping agricultural lands functioning. It's not always just about setting those aside. Sometimes it's about keeping them functioning, uh, you know, farmland preservation grants and that sort of thing. And, like, we have... Is... I, I imagine it's pretty hard to keep society focused on why those are important. You know, they hear terms like subsidies and they think, oh, we're just, you know, we're making it easy for people as opposed to actually making it possible for us to still feed a country, right?
Yeah. No, 100%. And
all these different po- policies are... They shouldn't be political, right? They're, they're beneficial no matter how we, we think of them. And, and I do worry that the general populace who's not directly engaged in these conversations all the time, as, as so many of us in this tent are, and so many listeners are to this show, um, they may not understand the importance of agriculture in their, in their daily lives, right? Um, when my [chuckles] when my grandfather, uh, Horace Lamb, was born in 1935, we had 6.8 million farms across the United States,
right? When he died in 2012, we had just over two million farms in the United States. So in his lifetime, he saw a decline of nearly five million farms. Now, in the 14 years since he died,
we've lost another two to 300,000 farms, right? So we have fewer farms now, uh, than we have in a very, very long time, way back into the early 19th century, which means that our society and our, our culture, more importantly, are more disconnected than food, from food production than ever before, right? So people may not inherently understand the need for these sorts of polities, policies that support conservation and agricultural economic development. And there are some great things that we could do. We could fund conservation easements more. We could fund some of these other conservation programs better. We could create an office of small farms within the USDA to make sure that all of the really good and important programs that come out of that department are actually flowing to the people who need them the most, um, and are critical to our food system and our rural economy. So yeah, I think the policy pieces are huge, um, and we could all do better to try to understand them more and realize that even if it's just money flowing to an individual farm family to protect their land from development, that that has a positive, beneficial ripple effect that flows out to, to all of us who eat, which is to say everyone. [chuckles]
Everyone. Um, so you told us a little bit about American Farmland Trust's, uh, uh, Transfer Navigators project and how it's, uh, essentially building a, a network of advisors, uh, attorneys, lenders, conservationists, um, uh, who help families, uh, who are facing one of the hardest decisions they've ever had to make, and you also sorta teased that now you're telling some of those stories, um, through a podcast, uh, called Landed. Um, tell us a little bit about that podcast and, and tell us, like, what, what can a podcast do for farm transition that a navigator network and, like, a planning document can't, right? What made you feel like audio storytelling was the right way to tell these stories, given how technical and emotional they are?
Yeah. So the Landed podcast is out now. We've got our first three episodes, plus a prologue out and ready. The next one drops tomorrow, so when everyone's flying home, when you're driving back, just pop onto Apple Podcast or Spotify or whatever app you use, check it out, download it, and then rate and subscribe while you're there. I'm in my promo pitch, and then I will-
This won't be the last time you hear this today, by the way, so [laughs]
Yeah, it's... You gotta be shady. That's right.
Make it the second podcast you subscribe to.
[laughs]
[laughs] Right. Exactly. So, so yeah, so, so this show, um, actually started to come about, Anders, because we talked with one of our colleagues who comes from a farm family in New York. And we asked her when we were thinking about the storytelling for this project, like, "Olivia, how would your dad learn about this program? He's a lifelong dairy farmer. Um, how would he hear about this?" And she said, "Oh, if he heard about it, you know, he might read about it in the paper or something, but it would probably be, be because he's listening to the radio on the tractor,
or he's got the radio on when he's driving to the feed store." Okay, great. Maybe we need to think about audio storytelling. So we realized, um, that the more that we share these stories, and if we can share them in a way that feel honest, and that are honest, and authentic, and empathetic. Like, if a farmer or rancher can listen to this podcast and say, "I hear myself and my family in that story," it may be happening Thousands of miles away, but if the same themes and realities and barriers and challenges are there that they can then hear and, and recognize,
then maybe that'll lead these farmers and ranchers who are listening to take action of some sort, and that action might be small. It might be broaching the difficult succession planning conversation around the kitchen table with their family. It might be the little kick that they need to finally call that estate planning attorney. Um, it might be the encouragement that they've been looking for to call their local land trust and say, "Hey, look, I've always wanted this place to be a farm forever. Can we start talking about how to make that happen?" So when we pursued this show, we were really intentional about the kind of stories we wanted to tell. We wanted to be really geographically diverse. So we've got episodes that are from Virginia, Georgia, and Colorado to Mississippi, Washington State, and Oklahoma, trying to cover the entire country and trying to show people rather than tell them that these issues matter. And if we can do that in a way, again, that feels honest and feels empathetic, we hope that we can lead people to action. And we are doing a few other things as well. We're reaching out to public radio stations across the country. Um, we know a lot of them have lost funding over the last couple years, and we're trying to say, "Hey, look, we'll make this program for free for you to run. Like, if you wanna air this as part of your programming, it's high-quality content. Um, it's relevant to your listeners. And here, you can plug it in to use it wherever you want." So we're trying that to reach more rural communities and more farmers and ranchers.
And we're also trying to reach, like, the general public because a lot of people assume that these generational transitions are simple and straightforward and easy. And if we can show them that they're actually not, and we can help them understand that our farming and our food future depends on how this land transitions and to whom it transitions, maybe they will start to care a little bit more about these issues. Maybe they will get a little more educated about the policy pieces that you mentioned, Bill, and maybe they will
start to wanna take action of, of some kind on their own. So that's the goal of the podcast. We're hoping it leads farmers and ranchers to action and that it raises awareness among the general public, and we hope it's entertaining, and it is entertaining. And if you get a chance to listen and like and subscribe, uh, it would help.
It is the second most entertaining podcast you'll hear from today.
[laughing]
I promise.
But audio isn't the only medium you're using to tackle the problem. You've also written a book, Love for the Land. Why don't you tell us about that?
Yeah. So this is a, a,
a book that kind of came out of my graduate work at the School of the Environment at, at Yale. Um, and it essentially looks at why small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers... And now that small and mid-size is kind of a loaded term, and it differs again from place to place, right? Small and mid-size Montana, different from small or mid-size Tennessee. Um, but how do these farmers at this scale
continue to care for their land and steward it well in the face of tremendous adversity? Um, in terms of adversity, I, I really investigated a few different things all through ethnographic research in a few different Tennessee communities. Um, one, farmland loss from real estate development, something we've already talked about a little bit. Two, agricultural consolidation, this get big or get out phenomenon that's been going on for a long time in the United States. Um, and then for underserved farmers, issues of, uh, injustice in, in the past and present for, for them. So looked at all these barriers, talked with farmers and ranchers about them,
and then asked, "Okay, you've just described all these challenges in very vivid detail.
Why are you still continuing to farm when you could sell this land, you could cash out,
you probably never have to work again given the value of some of this acreage, or you could go buy a bigger, nicer, fancier farm somewhere else in another rural community and, and be set, right?" And what they told me time and time and again is that it's their love for place that motivates their resilience. Um, and aligning with the, the writings of Wendell Berry, uh, who's been a huge influence on me as I'm sure he's been a big influence on a lot of folks here, um, it's really their imagination or their understanding and connection with specific pieces of land which lead to these senses of affection, not some wistful or nostalgic or sentimental, like, love, but this active, enduring, kind of virtuous love that shapes their character and their identity, um, and leads them to feel like there's no separation between the land and themselves.
And then that sort of love leading to this ultimate virtue of fidelity or calling to care for a place and, and to belong to it, right? Um, they shared all of that time and again. They didn't necessarily use the words fidelity or affection or imagination, but they talked about their connections to place and their love for them. And that's important on those farms, but I think it actually holds lessons for, for all of us, and we all have that capacity to connect with the land, whether it is a farm, whether it is a ranch, whether it's a park, uh, a backyard, uh, a tree that we pass on the sidewalk, right, on the way to work or school. We have the pa- capacity to connect with those areas and learn to love them, and it's through love that I think we can actually sustain our stewardship, right? Especially in the face of all these other barriers, economic and otherwise. So that's really what Love for the Land focuses on. Um, and, uh, they have copies over there, uh, in the tent. So if anyone's interested in that little spiel, feel free to go check them out.
I mean, that answer sums up this weekend, I think, a love for the land and the stories that come from a love for the land, right?
My story began on a family farm in West Virginia. Been in our family since 1763. Um-
He's trying to flex on you with that date.
He is flexing. [laughs]
Oh yeah, well, my farm has been around...
Comes from working with you, Anders. I always, I always have to try to keep up. Uh, but it is staggering to me that that number, 1763, is always kind of fun and crazy for me, and my, my dad found... The lease had been lost, the original lease at some point had been lost, and we found it. But
the farm just transitioned from my uncle, who was also a William, [laughs] Uncle Bill, uh, to my three cousins,
and I feel like that just happened. But we are on the cusp of it having to transition again to my cousins' kids, or kid, depending on who wants to stay.
I love the fact that Landed can end up being an interruption to somebody's day, or a place in somebody's day that they go, "Crap, we need to think about this. We need to think about it now," because it will be here, and so many times this happens in, in farm country is it's here before you're prepared for it to be here, and I really, really appreciate the, the American Farmland Trust, and what you're doing with Landed hopefully will stimulate people to get on top of this. Um, it, it happened y- from my mom's generation to my generation in a way that kind of left me out, but that was okay. We had moved around the country and, and, and my uncle had stayed behind and, and kept the farm functioning, so there was a certain fairness to the fact that that part of the family kept moving forward with it. But, you know, those connections that come from a place like that, like I... You know, I've been working in public lands conservation, working over here at this little piece of land called the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Um, but that all came from farm working land. It began there. Conservation, I think, began there, and that's something else that's lost when we lose that. When that land is turned into a subdivision, we lose that connection, that my conservation ethic began on a working farm in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. So, um, any other things people need to know about the American Farmland Trust that we maybe haven't touched on? We'd love to hear a, a little more about the work that maybe we didn't dig deep enough to know about.
Yeah, so a couple things that come to mind. One is actually a, a thought that came to mind as you were sharing your family story, Bill. You mentioned that you feel like this generational transition just happened, and then you're already looking at it getting ready to happen again soon. Um, I mentioned earlier I've, I've talked to a lot of farmers and ranchers across the country, um, and a phrase or a sentiment that I've heard a lot from a lot of older farmers and ranchers is, "I am going to die in my boots on this land. I'm gonna die on the tractor or out in my cattle pasture."
And that is extremely admirable, right? And it shows this lifelong commitment to stewardship. For a long time, I only thought of it as really admirable, and it is inspiring,
and it can also be problematic, right? Because if that farmer or rancher is actively farming and won't make room for anyone else in the next generation to, to step in and start to learn how to care for that land and start to take ownership of it themselves, they might be 80, 85 years old-
I, I have... My uncle was less than a week away from dying, and he still refused to let my cousins use his tractor.
Right. [laughs]
He couldn't get out of bed, and he still was like, "Well, you stay away from my tractor." So it, it happens all the time.
Oh, for sure. It's so real. And, and again, like admirable, right? But also, like makes it really hard for that next generation to step in and take on this new responsibility of caring for the land if they're already in their 60s, right? And then what about the generation that comes after them? So as someone who grew up on a family farm and is, is trying to encourage my own family to start these conversations and, and have them, um, with a little more intention, um, we have to think about the land beyond our own lifespans. We have to think about it bey- beyond our own time horizons, and think about how can we make sure that this place that deserves good care and good stewardship can continue to receive that even after we're gone. And it seems like to me, from everything that I've learned, including listening to, um, his commentary on one of the Wild Idea episodes, that Cole Mannix and the Mannix family are really living that out here at, at Old Salt, which is, is really powerful and, and beautiful to see. But on the note of, of American Farmland Trust, yeah, I mean, it's, it is a really terrific organization. I'm obviously biased, but, um, a really great group full of people who care about this work. If you wanna learn more, check out farmland.org. If you wanna learn more about the Landed podcast, you can also check out farmland.org/landed. It's on all the podcast platforms. And I, I really do hope folks get a chance to listen. We've worked really hard on this series, just like Anders and Bill worked really hard on the Wild Idea podcast, and I think there are stories that are worth hearing there. Um, and there are lessons worth carrying on into our lives even after we leave this magical festival, uh, sometime today.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. The Mannix family, the other ranches that are part of the co-op are living examples of caring for the land beyond now, uh, and so much important work goes on. Someone's gotta pay the light bill. We'll be right back after this break.
I'm Ingrid from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
So before we let Anders strip naked and get in the sauna and jump in the irrigation ditch... Don't act surprised. You know you're thinking about it out there.
If, if we want questions, you shouldn't offer that. People are gonna wanna see that.
[laughs]
I have a lot of questions now. [laughs]
Questions from you all, and I'll, I'll repeat them back just so the whole room can hear, but questions from... Anybody have a question out there? Yes. Yeah, so in case the room didn't hear, and certainly the, uh, the big royal r- room that is the Wild Idea podcast, to repeat that, like the outreach specifically to sort of CPAs and lawyers that are doing estate planning,
uh, when to engage, how to engage- Is the American Farmland Trust thinking about enterprises at a, maybe a different scale than just the farming or ranching, like the other enterprises that might be a part of the land? And lastly, gathering, you know, encouraging people to get everybody around the same table in that planning process. I know with my uncle, it was gonna be the way he was gonna hand it down, not the way the generation that was getting it. Like, he set the farm up as an LLC so that the three girls couldn't split it up sort of thing. But like, so respond to that, Brooks.
Yeah. Uh, if I miss anything, remind me, Bill. But the first, the kinda professionals question, yes. So American Farmland Trust, through the Land Transfer Navigators Project, actually convenes in every region across the country, what we call our regional forums, and those are specifically for service providers and professionals who work in the succession planning space. And maybe they're already deeply familiar with these issues, and they're just joining to meet other people who also work in this space. Or maybe they're a tax advisor who is really wanting to expand their services to cater more to farmers and ranchers. So they can all join these quarterly calls. We have breakout opportunities where they can meet one another and actually start to build their own network. So that way, when a farmer or rancher goes to that tax advisor and they really have a question that's more suited for an estate planning attorney, that tax advisor can say, "Hey, look, I can't answer that question, but I know this woman named Sarah in this town who can help you out." So we're trying to build those networks out, and we're offering presentations at every one of these forums too, on tax strategy, on heirs' property and how that can affect families in the present and in the future. All of these different topics that help people grow their knowledge and their expertise so they can provide better services. So yes, that's a huge part, um, of the Navigators project. The second piece around kind of enterprising young folks who wanna step in and, and help carry on a family legacy of farming or ranching. Um, I think we do need that sort of creativity and innovation, while also honoring the place-based wisdom of the generations who came before us. Sometimes I hear people
say, "Well,
Dad or Grandma did it this way forever, and I, I wanna do it different." Well, it might be worth doing it differently. It might also be working to try to understand why Dad or Grandma did it that way and what their motivations and their reasoning were, right? Not instead of necessarily saying, "You have to do it like that," but trying to understand and learn from those previous generations and use that knowledge to make an informed decision now. So, um, that comes to mind. The other, the other thing s- that comes to mind for me on that answer, and then I'll, I'll get to the last one. I sometimes deal with, like, an existential crisis [laughs] in my work around family farm and ranch transitioning, and, and especially next-generation land access, because it's one thing to help a next-generation farmer get onto the land. But when we do that, at least right now, we're also pushing them into a system that marginalizes them, right? That really doesn't necessarily value or respect or appreciate family-scale farming and ranching across the country. And so I, I struggle with that sometimes. Like, yes, we can help this individual get onto the land, and that is amazing. And are they gonna make it? Right? In five years, will they still be there? And that's why I think it's so important to pursue this work from the individual targeted lens that helps individual families, but also pursue it on this larger systemic and structural level that says, maybe we can try to help more families who are in those situations thrive rather than struggle to survive. That would make me feel a lot better about getting that next generation onto the land. And then can you remind me the third part of the question?
Well, just about getting everybody around the same table early enough and how you encourage that and-
Yeah. So, um, I do think that's crucial, and I'm actually-- I'm going to steal a piece of advice that one of my good friends, um, and someone who's featured heavily in the third episode of our Landed podcast. His name's Dan Skeeters. He's actually out here in the audience. Um,
Dan recommends when he talks to farmers and ranchers who are getting ready to bring their family around the table, he recommends that they start with the best possible case scenario in mind.
Right? Um, so often when we come to these big conversations, we start with this, um,
kind of limited mindset, this scarcity mindset that what we want's never actually gonna be possible, so why even think about it? And, and Dan says that's, that's not right, [laughs] right? Think about what you actually want. And, and one thing I've encouraged people to do in, in presentations and other things too, is to actually encourage every single individual who's gonna come around that table to maybe grab a, a note card, and in two to three bullet points write the things that are most important to them. What is their best case scenario? And then when you start this conversation, go around that table and have everyone share the things that matter most to them. It's unlikely that everyone, I mean, it might be unlikely that any single individual around that table gets everything that they want. But when you go through that process and you make it clear and put it out in the open what people's main motivations are, what their visions are, what their hopes are, at least it's clear, right? Even if there is disagreement. There are so often assumptions in these conversations too that, "Oh, I just, I don't think my brother cares anything about this place." And then if you actually start a conversation and you realize, "Oh my God, this place has shaped him just like it shaped me," um, that's crucial, right? So just trying to get around the table and share what that best case scenario is to get that common vision and then to figure out the way forward. The road's gonna be bumpy. It's gonna be windy. It's never gonna be perfect and straight and paved, right? But there are ways we can come together and, and find compromise or pursue this common vision if we just actually talk about it. So...
So the question Was a lot of our conversation has been focused on making sure a second or third generation farm becomes a fourth and fifth generation farm. But what about the work that AFT is doing on those who want to be first generation farmers? And I'll augment what you said, which is a lot of young people wanting to get into this that are coming from an urban environment. So maybe we're starting to reverse the flow because so much of our society has been a flow from rural to people moving to urban environments. What about that? What about first generation farming and the work that AFT does? And what do we need to think about, about creating the space for that, um, that opportunity for folks to get into it? And it is daunting. It was mentioned in the question that the, the thought of purchasing the land seems so
out of reach for so many people, even if they have the biggest dreams.
Yeah, it's really important. Um, two quick notes before I actually start to answer the question. One, so happy that you're part of the Young Farmers Coalition chapter. Um, they do fantastic work across the country. We only have one chapter that's active in Tennessee, and it's in Southeast Tennessee, but I went ahead and joined it anyway, even though I'm like four hundred miles away, because I really believe in, in what the organization does. Second thing, you're Boulder County, Colorado, you said? Boulder County, Colorado, this county government actually has this really innovative leasing program where they try to actually take county-owned land and lease it to young and aspiring farmers at more affordable rates. So if people are looking at what do we do about this problem, that is a model to actually look at and see if maybe you want to emulate it and implement it in your own counties, wherever it is you're coming to, uh, or coming, uh, here from today. Um, for a long time, I thought it was exceptionally important that multi-generational farms remain in the same family. I still think when that vision is shared by members of the family and it can work out that that's great. I have also started to come back from that notion and say that what's actually most important is the land-- is that the land is stewarded well and cared for by someone who loves it and wants to be there. And sometimes that fourth-generation farmer may not have people in that fifth generation who actually really want to be there and to care for it. And that's fine. We don't need to villainize those people because they may not want the same lifestyle that it just so happens that previous generations did. Um, or they may not have any heirs at all. In either of those instances, I think it's really important that we're building networks of people and we're using organizations like Young Farmers Coalition to make sure that young people are prepared and educated and ready to step in and take on that stewardship and farming responsibility so they can step into those situations where maybe there is a land transition that's getting ready to happen,
and we can make sure that there's someone to step in there and fill those boots, even if it's not in the same family. Because again, it's, it's the care for the land that matters most, not necessarily some family tie. That said, um, there are also really innovative ways to pursue that. And episode five of The Landed podcast-
You're so good at this.
Ah, yeah, I'm seamless, man. No one can even tell that I'm promoting right now.
Were you a plant? [laughing]
Not looking at me, though. [laughing] Um, episode five is from Washington State. It's on the Kitsap Peninsula outside of Seattle.
And there's this older couple whose land had been in the family since the 1950s, and they had moved away, and then they moved back later in life to care for it. And then they got to where they couldn't really farm anymore. And
they found, through connections in the community, a young farmer who was so eager to get started, had just finished some college courses on sustainable farming, and she was just looking for land. She had everything. She had the desire, the drive, the knowledge, the experience, um, and she just couldn't find land to actually farm.
She started doing these year-to-year leases with them, and she actually paid her lease in vegetables, [chuckles] right? It was as-- the deal was, it was as many vegetables as the older couple could either eat or can and preserve. [chuckles] Um, and they, they told me when I interviewed them, they're like, "Yeah, we're just two old people, but we can eat a lot of vegetables." [laughing] I was like, "All right. Uh, maybe this isn't the deal that I thought it was." But, um,
they, they ended up doing these year-to-year leasing arrangements with this farmer for, for years. She's been leasing the same plot of land for seven years now.
And what the older couple realized is that for them and their children, it actually really was important for everyone that the land remain in the family. That was, that was a value that they held dearly.
But it was also important for them that this farmer who they've come to think of as family have the chance to continue caring for this place. So they set up, through the help of a land transfer navigator, one of my colleagues at American Farmland Trust, uh, one-- uh, named Elizabeth Bragg, really phenomenal person. Um, they set up this arrangement where the ownership, the title of the land, would flow to this couple's daughter, and she would continue to own it in the family and move back and live in that house once the older couple moved back. And they also set up a twenty-year lease
with the young farmer who had been caring for this place and who's come to love it and who feels like family, so that she has secure long-term land tenure for the next two decades, right? Um,
that's innovative. It's not the traditional, like, transition model, but, but it can really, really work. Um, and if we can continue to use things like Young Farmers Coalition chapters, like land link programs that get people in touch with someone who's either looking for land or someone who has land, we might find ways, either through leasing or through creative purchase options or buy protect sell programs, where an organization steps in, purchases the land, protects it with a conservation easement, and then sells it at a discount to that next generation. Like, we can find ways to make this happen. Um-
And I think it's not just that we can, it's like that we, we have to, especially with land prices what they are. Um, last thing I will say just on the land price note, um, I mentioned that I grew up on a seventy-five acre farm about fifty miles south of Nashville. Uh, my wife and I would really like to get on a farm of our own. My parents are still farming, like, it doesn't feel right to ask them to step aside and try to take over that land right now. So, uh, in the fall, thirty something acres came up for sale less than a mile down the road from my family's land. My wife and I are like, "This is it." Like this is the chance. Didn't have a house on it, didn't have a barn. If you got close enough to the perimeter fencing and sneezed, it would all probably fall over, right? [chuckles] It's not like a fancy, you know, nice place, but it was good land. Some of it floodplain, whatever.
They were asking thirty-four thousand dollars an acre for that land, and that was not an anomaly. Right down the road in the other direction, eighty acres had sold for twenty-eight thousand dollars an acre about two years ago, right? Um, for someone who doesn't come from a background of generational wealth, it is damn near impossible to make that pencil and actually work out, right? So we've got to figure out these creative solutions to get that next generation on the land, whether they grew up on farms or not. Thank you for that question.
Yeah, I think we're sort of running out of time, but one more question in the back there. Uh, for those of you who didn't hear that, um, the question is about taxes, property taxes, and how property taxes almost become a tool for breaking up land because you have almost an appreciation tax on income that wasn't earned. Uh, I think I'm paraphrasing that correctly. Do you-- Are you guys thinking about that at American Farmland Trust? And, uh, 'cause I mean, that is a Montana thing right now for sure, but I'm sure it's not exclusive to Montana about how property taxes are driving family farms and ranches out of families' hands, um, because of that issue.
Yeah. A few thoughts, uh, and a caveat. I am not a tax professional, uh, nor do I have any expertise in this realm, but I'm gonna throw an answer out anyway because I do think it's an important question. Um,
yeah, y- And, and even stepping back for a second, um,
some economic metrics around agriculture and farmers and ranchers are, are really skewed, right? Um, you might be able to look at net worth of a farmer and rancher, and it might be in the millions, and you're like, "Dang, they're doing well." And then you realize that the vast majority in their, of their net worth is in an illiquid asset like the land, and in order to actually tap into that, they have to sell it, completely change their identity and their livelihood approach, and lose the foundation of their entire operation, right? So the net worth, uh, figure is not actually all that, that useful. On, on the tax front, um,
it's, it's honestly, it's an area where I'm not
an expert. Um, I do know a lot of states, and I assume Montana has this as well, um, tax at the, uh, agricultural value. Um, so it is a greatly reduced value on the property taxes compared to what it is to land not used for those agricultural purposes. In Tennessee, it's called the Greenbelt law, and land gets taxed at twenty-five percent of its appraised value, which does make it easier for farm families to, to hang on to it. Um, I actually would be really interested, and we tried to look at this in Tennessee, and it turns out, um, that the property tax code governing the Greenbelt law is actually in the state constitution. So changing it requires a tremendous amount of effort and advocacy, and, and it's not clear if we could actually make it happen. But I would love to institute in Tennessee and, and in other places across the country,
uh, what are called agricultural districts.
And these are areas where landowners can voluntarily, uh, create these districts that are meant to maintain farming in their communities. And those offer some benefits. Usually, there's a little enhanced eminent domain protection, or there's other-- y-you get some signage along the road, maybe you get some other accolades or, or acknowledgments. I would love to see agricultural districts see if they could create an enhanced property tax, like adder or like a, a value that maybe if you choose to enroll in an agricultural district and you promise through enrollment in that program that you will not develop your farm or ranch for a period of ten years or whatever it may be, that instead of being taxed at that twenty-five percent value, maybe you can bump down to fifteen percent because, um, you've committed to keeping that land in agriculture. Maybe if it's protected through a conservation easement and you know it's always gonna be a farm and you'll never sell that for other, uh, land use purposes, maybe you could get like a, a adder on that, um, deduction, I guess, as, as well, um, for the, the property tax rate. Um, I think that could be really beneficial. And one reason before anyone, probably not in this tent, but anyone elsewhere says, "Well, why are we giving farmers yet another tax break?" Um,
if we look at what American Farmland Trust calls cost of community services studies, we see that for every dollar of income generated in property tax revenue by agricultural land, it usually costs somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty, thirty, forty cents to provide services to those areas.
Versus if you look at developed land, and it's especially true of residential development land, the equation doesn't work quite the same on, on commercial or industrial land. But if you look at, like, residential, suburban, low-density sprawl,
people always think, "Oh, that's gonna be an economic boon for our area, right? Because we've added more people, and that means we've added more property tax." Well, yes, you have added more property tax revenue. Um, but what we see is that for every dollar generated by those residential land use areas, it often costs dollar ten, dollar twenty, dollar thirty to actually provide services to those areas because you've got to build new schools- You've got to build and maintain new roads, you've got to provide additional police and fire protection, you've got to put in sidewalks and stoplights and sewage systems and water infrastructure and, and all these things that add up really fast, right? So what a lot of rural counties and, like, counties that are on the rural-urban fringe see
is that maintaining agricultural land in their area, even though it may not generate as much property tax income, is actually more of an economic benefit because they're not having to spend as much to provide services to those new residential areas. So, um, in these conversations where we're thinking about how do we make sure that our property tax structure doesn't continue breaking up farm and ranch land, it's important for us to recognize and realize that that helps those individual farm families, but it is also good for all of us in our county and community finances. So kind of a rambling all over the place answer to your question, but a good one, and thank you for asking that.
Yeah, great question, and I think for those out there listening to the podcast, it's--
I think the challenge is for you to think about
policies and taxes and don't just live inside your own bubble and get biased about your bubble. Everybody in Montana's concerned about property taxes, but thinking about the nuance of how that property tax applies to agricultural production land versus maybe the subdivision you live in, whatever state you live in, I think it's important. Brooks, thank you. What a fantastic conversation to start us on a Sunday morning. Really appreciate it, and, uh, thanks for, thanks for coming all the way out here from Tennessee.
No, I-- it is an honor. I am a Wild Idea listener, and what a thrill to be a Wild Idea guest. So thank y'all so much for having me, and thank you all for being here.
[applause]
Thank you all so much for coming, and, uh, don't forget to also subscribe to The Wild Idea podcast. Rate and review on your podcast player of choice, recommend us to a friend, and we also have a way to support us through Buy Me a Coffee or in Anders and I's case, buy us a stiff drink, uh, which is available on our website at thewildidea.com, and thanks for coming out today.
Now to the sauna. [laughing]
The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth, and was composed by John Keahan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Lara Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]