Land Legacies: No More Farm Dynasties

I don’t believe in farm dynasties. Perhaps there are instances where people of wealth who own land can enable farmers who use sustainable practices and don’t have as much wealth to stay on the land. And certainly, in a country that honors freedom and capitalism, anyone who has enough money and desire can buy land, when it is available.

However, what bothers me is the way land ownership by the same family for many decades has been put on a pedestal even when the heirs have had little or no contact with the land and those who farm it. Iowa’s Century Farm and Heritage Farm programs, which recognize families who have owned the same farmland for 100 and 150 years or more, do that. Our culture does, too. I never hear challenges to people living in some distant state talking about feeling connected to their heritage because they own farmland in the Midwest. Even though the economy and culture of my hometown were shaped by farming, I don’t recall discussions in the schools, churches, organizations, or community about the issues of land ownership.

With my rural farmland, I don’t want to continue the family land dynasty that started with my great-grandfather and his brother.

For the most part, my nieces and nephews have no connection to the land; presumably they are all doing well by their respective standards, and are likely to inherit land and/or other assets from their parents and others. Owning land should have something to do with being connected to that land—like knowing about the terrain, the people who farm it, and the ethics involved in managing it.

These days, there is talk of great “income inequality” in our country. Trends in landownership and how land is used would seem to fall under that umbrella of issues. We should de-emphasize programs like the Century and Heritage Farm awards, or at least establish additional programs that would honor landowners who rent or transfer their property to farmers or other people who would manage the land in healthy ways. Practical Farmers of Iowa has taken one step in that direction by initiating its annual Farmland Owner Award.

Two of my professors at San Francisco Theological Seminary taught about issues of landownership in their course on the Old Testament and the prophets. They used a big term called “latifundialization,” which means the “process whereby land increasingly accrues into the hands of just a few.” The “fundi” part of the word refers to the Earth, and “lati” refers to something like “lateral” and “moving off.”

We focused a lot on the story about King Ahab and a peasant named Naboth (1 Kings 21). Ahab and other Israeli kings were known to take control of land that had been used for subsistence farming, move the peasants off, and put in an olive orchard or grape vineyard with the idea of marketing the olives and wine to trade for material for war. So indeed, a person could wonder if much has changed since then with powerful governments shifting land away from subsistence purposes and using it for war purposes–or enacting farm policies that favor unsustainable practices for the benefit of corporations.

Essay reprinted with permission from The Future of Family Farms: Practical Farmers’ Legacy Letter Project, edited by Teresa Opheim (University of Iowa Press, 2016).

Climate Land Leaders

Land Legacies: No More Farm Dynasties – Helen Gunderson