FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is a family farmer?

For FSIA, a family farmer is any farmer who supports the local community.  This means that the farmer purchases farm supplies (seed, fertilizer, etc.) and equipment from local dealers instead of directly from distant manufacturers or suppliers.  Family farmers also spend in the local community.  Over the course of a year, farmers handle hundreds of thousands of dollars, and when that money is circulating in a local community it makes quite a difference.  Supporting the local community also means farming in a sustainable manner: plowing to limit run-off into waterways, properly maintaining ditches and waterways, and maintaining soil fertility properly.  The success of rural communities depends on the viability of local farmland.

The size of the farm operation does not really matter.  A 400 acre farm operation could bypass local dealers and farm unsustainably, and a 3,000 acre operation could frequent local dealers and be a sound land steward.  What really matters is how the farmer acts.

I thought farmers always owned their own farms, is this right?

In Central Illinois, the average farmer has to rent farmland from another landowner to farm in addition to the land that he owns in order to earn enough to farm full-time.  Many farmers rent 40-60% of the land that they farm in any given year.  This is a common practice in the parts of the country that are the biggest corn and soybean producers, like Central Illinois.  Farmers are under pressure from landowners and mega-farm operators who are pushing up farmland rental prices quite quickly.  Cash rent leases, where the farmer pays a price per acre up front, are becoming more common.  This makes the farmer bear all the risk from bad harvests while the landowner takes his share up front.

The last few years have seen good harvests, but after paying high land rent prices, family farmers cannot afford a poor harvest year.  Family farmers are under real economic pressure.

How is environmental stewardship connected to the survival of family farms and rural communities?

Productive farmland is the foundation of the economies of communities throughout Central Illinois.  Soil is the main local natural resource, and without sound farmland stewardship the viability of rural community life is at stake.  Absentee mega-farm operators have a tendency to farm in a manner that favors speed over quality, leading to  soil stewardship short-cuts that promote run-off and the mining of soil fertility.  Local family farmers have a vested interest in the survival of their communities, and therefore have a commitment to soil stewardship that promotes the long-term fertility of local farmland and the survival of local rural communities.

What is community disinvestment?

Simply put, community disinvestment is the flight of money from a community.  A classic example is an inner city slumlord.  A slumlord owns a number of apartments in a neighborhood, and charges exorbitant rent for substandard (often dilapidated) housing.  The high rent prices stand because the neighborhood residents can’t afford to move away, and the landlord sets the price.  Similar things are happening in rural communities.  Influential farmland owners are doing the same thing to family farmers.  Once settled in a community, a family farmer has little other choice but to find enough local land to own and rent in order to keep on farming.  Many times, the only option is to pay the exorbitant land rent price and hope for the best.  Potential profit is squeezed from the farmer by the landowner, who has few ties to the local community.  In the past, local families owned the farmland, but as families moved away to cities, absentee landownership became more common, accelerating the rise of high land cash rent prices.

I live in the city, why should I care about farms and rural communities?

The first reason is that the food we eat comes from farms, and that their health is essential to our own.  Second, the life of rural communities is tied to the health of farms and is also more closely connected to city life than may be obvious at the surface.  In Central Illinois, agriculture is one of the largest employers even in cities like Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, Springfield, Peoria, and Champaign-Urbana.  The success of local family farms is directly connected to the economic and ecological well-being of the cities in our region.  The third reason is that many of us, including city-dwellers, have family connections to farms and rural communities.  For many families, it is not too difficult to trace history back to stories about the family farm or rural community where relatives lived.  In Central Illinois, it is clear that urban communities need family farms and rural communities, and that family farms and rural communities need urban communities.