By Benya Kraus
President and CEO, SMIF
During the summer of my junior year of college, I had what I now call my “quarter-life existential crisis.”
I was 21 years old and spending the summer in Waseca on the family farm, a stark departure from the life I was living in Boston during the school year. Instead of cocktail bar hopping in the city with my new 21-year-old status, I was spending most of my days tagging along on the four-wheeler with my Uncle Paul. It was one of those afternoon four-wheeler rides that changed the trajectory of my life.
Usually, we would spend those rides assessing the water levels at Moonan Marsh — but this time, Uncle Paul took me on a “legacy tour.” He pointed to plots of land that seemed empty to me, but beneath the rows of soybeans planted was a story of a family. A family who, like mine, had weathered the challenges of the 1980s farm crisis on a shoestring and managed to make it to generation six on the family farm today. Other families weren’t so fortunate. Some were forced to sell their land at pennies on the dollar, losing not just the land but the sense of identity that came along with it. For some, the loss of that identity was so devastating that entire lives were lost to suicide. At the end of the day, Uncle Paul took me to a plot of land under a big oak tree. “This is where I want to be buried one day,” he said.
Experiencing the depth of connection between farmers and their land in such a way changed me. I learned the meaning of stewardship. Of building toward a legacy you may never see. Of enduring sacrifices today so that future generations may somehow feel the depth of your love, buried deep into the land. In that soil is your legacy, and the legacy of love you’ve inherited from those before you.
Today, the challenges of farming have a lot of similarities to the 1980s. Between soaring land prices, the increasing cost of inputs, volatile commodity prices and extremely tight profit margins, it is harder than ever to keep farmland within the family. Especially given that the average age of a farmer in Minnesota is 57 years old, our 20-county region is set to experience nearly $7 billion in agricultural wealth transfer over the next 10 years as farmers move toward retirement. Without a clear transition plan, the earnings from this farmland may end up in the pockets of individual investors without much connection to our region. The farmer’s love buried deep in the soil may stay buried, without a pathway to bear fruit to the next generation.
At Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, we offer a pathway to retaining that legacy through our Acres for Good program – an opportunity for landowners to donate their farmland to the foundation, so that future earnings from their land can be re-invested back into their community.
We know that making a decision on the future of one’s farmland is a deeply personal one.
It’s not just an “asset transfer.” It’s a sense of responsibility, an ancestral connection, a testament of resilience and a question of one’s legacy. There is a heartbreak in realizing that one’s farmland may not pass onto a next generation of family ownership. Acres for Good does not erase that heartbreak, but can perhaps give it purpose. What if your farmland legacy could show up in the face of a young child, who now has access to high quality Early Childhood education because of the investment your land left them with? Or the new entrepreneur who can follow his dream because of the start-up investment your land has unlocked? Or perhaps the emerging farmer who can build that same connection to the soil your ancestors had because of the donation you made possible?
When I drive across our region today, I no longer see empty plots of land the way I did as a child. Instead, I see the legacies that lay beneath that land – that of my own family and of the hundreds of families across southern Minnesota who are shaped by the love of the lives buried within that soil. It’s with that care to legacy that we invite you to explore a conversation with us about the legacy you, too, would like your land to leave for the future of southern Minnesota.
To learn more about our Acres for Good program, visit smifoundation.org/acres.
As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can reach me at benyak@smifoundation.org or 507-455-3215.
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