OAK BROOK, Ill. – Revitalizing rural communities with the help of agriculture was the topic of a June 25 Farm Foundation Forum. The event was in partnership with the American Farmland Trust (AFT).

The forum’s moderator, Tim Brennan, Farm Foundation vice president of programs and strategic impact, opened the session by talking about growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in a farming community in northeast Ohio that had seen better days.

“Farm consolidation, population loss, brain drain and other economic factors made our town of 600 people no more than a footnote in local history books,” he recalled. “The farm crisis of the 1980s put an end to any hope of economic recovery for my town and most of our county.

“Today, I live in a farming community about 35 miles south of Chicago and the threats are a little different here. While agriculture makes up 85 percent of the land use in our town, farmland is looked at as simply land that’s waiting to be developed. The soil is not seen as a precious resource and our farmers are not valued for all they bring to the table in our community. I think we can and must change these perceptions and today we’ll talk about why and what will happen if we don’t.”

Julia Freedgood, senior fellow and senior program adviser for AFT, said there were about 7 million farms in the U.S. in 1935, the peak of agriculture in the country in terms of the number of farms. The average farm size was 155 acres.

By 2022, the U.S. had 1.8 million farms, and an average farm size of 466 acres.

“Since the 1970s, farm policy has focused on increasing agricultural productivity and exporting commodities around the world. President (Richard M.) Nixon’s Ag Secretary, Earl Butz, famously said ‘get big or get out,’ and to plant fencerow to fencerow. Since then, these kinds of priorities have profoundly affected agriculture and what’s happening in rural America,” Freegood said.

While these policies did indeed contribute to a significant increase in U.S. crop production (total farm output has nearly tripled between 1948 and 2019), improved distribution efficiencies and a cheaper food supply, the sustainability and resilience of agriculture and rural communities was severely tested. Butz’ exoneration also resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of U.S. farms and the “hollowing out” of many rural communities, according to Freedgood, whose work is concentrated on farmland protection and land access, among other specialties.

Most farms in the country are small and mid-size family farms, she noted. Together they operate on just under 60 percent of the land and generate 35 percent of the value of production.

“(These farms) are the bedrock of many local and rural communities and their decline has reduced the diversity of food supply chains and led to declining employment and economic opportunity, rural depopulation and the loss of things like hospitals, schools and banks,” Freedgood pointed out.

COVID was a wake up call as the country wasn’t prepared for the disruptions along the food supply chain, she said. 

“Covid was the canary in the coal mine. When the pandemic hit, consumers and at least some policymakers were shocked to find empty shelves in supermarkets. The country as a whole was not prepared for these disruptions along the food supply chain, and the sudden surge in home cooking. This exposed vulnerabilities in our food system, but it also revealed opportunities for innovation and change,” Freedgood said, adding that communities with established local and regional food systems pivoted quickly to fill gaps by leveraging local production and distribution networks to meet residents’ food needs. 

Small and mid-sized farms support rural economies, she said, and are more likely to be diversified; grow food for local markets, purchase equipment, livestock and supplies locally; employ local people; and create cohesive communities.

“I believe the solution to these problems lies in community engagement and action,” she said. “Connecting the community, especially farmers and ranchers, through a planning or community development process and resulting actions is incredibly impactful.

“I don’t want to diminish the importance of large commodity farms. Thanks to 50 or more years of federal policy, large and very large farms are the only sector that’s growing.”

Another forum speaker, Xochitl Torres Small, former deputy USDA secretary and former U.S. representative from New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district, said she spent a lot of her time in Congress talking to colleagues about why rural matters.

“We’ve certainly seen across the country this increasing divide where folks don’t understand the value of each other’s work and that’s why these kinds of conversations are so crucial,” she said.

“The way that I talked about how and why we support agriculture specifically is that, of course, our farmers feed our country and it’s crucial that our food be affordable, that it can be healthy and that we can access it everywhere in our country close to home. That also means we have to support the people and the places that feed us.”

When considering a strategy to help achieve rural vitality and resiliency, Small recommended thinking about whether it supports really good jobs in a community, and if it can serve as a multiplier for jobs, not just in one sector but in other sectors. Also, is it supporting sustainability for the long haul, and does it maintain the essence of a community?

“So, how do we make sure that agriculture continues to be the heartbeat of a community?” she asked. “It takes knowledge on the ground. We have to listen to farmers and community.

“We have to invest in research that will make sense for farmers to apply in the future. We have to recognize innovations and ideas and we have to support as farmers look to plan and diversify. So, if they can take a risk that will turn into opportunities for themselves, for rural people and for places across our country.”