Farmland

How we will feed ourselves in the future depends on how we care for farmland today.

The Land Connection is working with individual farmers and landowners who are looking for alternatives.  We do this one-on-one, and through our website Midwest Farm Connection.  We have successfully matched beginning farmers with farmland, found investors to purchase farmland so that a new farmer can use it for sustainable food production, and have developed a model agricultural easement for farmers and farmland owners to use to protect agricultural land forever. To learn more, just contact us.

Fertile farmland is one of our country's greatest natural resources, but it is being paved over at an alarming rate. Over the next 20 years, a total of 400 million acres of farmland will change hands—much of it sold to non-farmers. Illinois is among the states losing the most farmland most rapidly, jeopardizing the future of Illinois farms, farmers, rural communities, and everyone wanting fresh, local foods.

Sandra Steingraber’s mother grew up on the farm pictured above, as did her mother’s parents. When Sandra’s grandmother died at age 100, the siblings needed to sell the farmland, and The Land Connection was able to bring together a group of urban investors to purchase the farm in order to have a young neighbor transition it to organic production.