Editorial roundup

Eau Claire Leader-Telegram (Wisc.)

Family farms critical

March 6

There was a story Monday that we’d like to highlight. It was about Wayne Erickson and his family’s long connection to its farm.

The property and the Erickson family will be honored during this year’s Wisconsin State Fair as a century farm — a farm in a single family’s possession for at least 100 years. According to the Wisconsin State Farm Park, the generations involved in a century farm vary. It’s rarely less than three, but the average runs from that up to five generations.

Erickson doesn’t work the land anymore. He told the L-T the family sold the cows when he turned 60. But the family still has possession and rents out the 160 acres for farming.

Erickson’s land isn’t alone. If you ask the Wisconsin State Fair, which handles the awards, there are almost 10,000 such farms across the state. The program started in 1948, when some 808 farms were honored.

Fifty years later the fair began honoring sesquicentennial farms — those in the same family for at least 150 years. The toll the latter part of the 20th century took on family farms was clear. Only 237 farms were recognized during that first ceremony, 29.3% of the number of century farms in 1948.

It’s true that not all the farms that passed from family ownership in those five decades did so due to the challenges of the farm crisis or other economic shifts. Some family lines likely ended. Others probably didn’t have heirs whose hearts were in the work, so they sought their careers elsewhere.

Family farms peaked in 1935, when there were 6.8 million across the country. That figure fell to around 2 million by 1970 and, in 2023, was down to 1.89 million according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The shift is clear in another USDA dataset, albeit one a little older. As of 2018, 89.7% of all American farms were small family operations. That overwhelming total doesn’t give that sector similar dominance on land or the value of production. Family farms account for 47.7% of farm acres and only 21.1% of the total production value.

What’s the wild card? Large and midscale family operations. If you add those into the mix, family farming accounts for 97.9% of all farms, 88.3% of the land and 87.6% of production value. In other words, the death of family farming has in some ways been overheralded.

There’s no question the landscape, both financially and literally, has changed. There’s also no question that there are legitimate questions about whether American agricultural policy places a thumb on the scales in favor of large operations compared to mid-sized and small farms. Families remain the heart of farming, though, even as those changes have proceeded.

And, lest people be tempted to think agriculture’s changes have lessened its importance to the overall Wisconsin economy, remember that most assessments place it as one of the three biggest industries in the state. Manufacturing and health care are the other two. The annual impact exceeds $100 billion for Wisconsin.

Farming is unquestionably different from when the Erickson family began farming in our region. That’s to be expected. The shifts since the post-WWI era are enormous, both in terms of technology and the implements used on farms.

Still, there’s something comforting in knowing that families remain attached to the land their ancestors began farming so long ago. And here’s to another hundred years.