“Egg production right now, which is what I’m in, what my father was in, 90-something percent of the eggs [in the country] are produced by 60 company farms,” Spencer said.
This trend towards industrial operations, too, isn’t unique to Montana: At the same time that America is losing family farms to development, large corporate farms are increasingly dominating and consolidating the agricultural sector, making use of centralized processing facilities and producing inexpensive products to be shipped all over the country and abroad. According to data from the USDA, between 2012 and 2017, the number of corporate-owned agriculture operations increased by roughly 10 percent. The number of operations owned by an individual or family decreased by the about the same percent during that period.
Regarding this situation, Spencer is a realist. “I don’t know if it’s a problem. It’s reality,” he said. “Food is still going to be available. Is it going to be from family farms or corporate agriculture? It’s going to be more and more corporate agriculture. Large corporations are increasingly taking over more and more, have been for a long time.”
Still, the transformation of America’s agricultural system is not without consequence. Smaller farm and ranch operations contribute considerably to local economies by spending money in the immediate community, selling locally, and creating local jobs. Rural communities suffer as the viability of the agricultural sector weakens and employment opportunities through farming diminish.
“When you buy something at Walmart, none of that profit, none of that dollar, stays circulated in our economy, right? It goes to the corporate headquarters,” said Bonnie Buckingham, executive director of the Community Food & Agriculture Coalition (CFAC, a Missoula-based nonprofit working to create a viable local and regional food system in Western Montana. “There’s also community values and community connection. When people are connected to their community through food, through purchasing food from a farmer or taking part in a farmer’s market, those types of activities build stronger connections within the community.”
Smaller operations are also often more environmentally friendly — they are less likely to use high volumes of toxic pesticides, and more likely to support both crop and ecological diversity. And they tend to perform better from an animal ethics standpoint. Spencer, for example, feeds his chickens a 100 percent vegetarian diet and raises his birds in a cage-free setting.
When farms like Spencer’s are lost entirely to development, that means an irreversible loss of soil as well. Only a small percentage of the topsoil in Montana is suitable for agriculture. CFAC estimates that just 8 percent of Missoula County’s land base, for example, contains soils that are agriculturally important. That soil was generated over thousands of years — to create a mere three centimeters of topsoil takes approximately a thousand years.
Much of that soil rests along Missoula’s valley floor — exactly the same place real estate developers are eying. If it is paved over, that soil can’t perform key ecological functions like growing food, holding water, and absorbing carbon, an increasingly critical ecosystem service as policy-makers scramble to curb global warming.
“If we don’t preserve what is currently there, then we just lose it. Viable, productive, or [potentially] productive soils, which could be a field that is grazed with horses or just left to grow grass, those soils are preserved in something like that for the future,” said Buckingham. “Whereas if there’s a house on it or industry — if it’s disturbed and subdivided — then we no longer have that ability to grow food on it.”
IN AN ATTEMPT to combat some of the agricultural challenges facing the state, nonprofit organizations and government officials have found innovative ways to step up and take action.
“If we don’t preserve what is currently there, we just lose it.”
Trust Montana, for example, is working to permanently preserve Montana’s farmland. While the organization previously focused primarily on preserving affordable housing, in May of 2020, it partnered with two other organizations — Agrarian Trust and Vilicus Training Institute — to establish the Montana Agrarian Commons. The Commons will acquire conservation easements that restrict non-agricultural development of land, hold that land in trust for the community, and lease it to beginning farmers at affordable prices. An Agrarian Commons program will also create a unique selling option for retiring farmers and ranchers who want their land kept in agriculture and stewarded responsibly.
“Agrarian commons are designed to hold land in perpetuity for the use of farming, and then the farmers have long-term leases,” said King-Ries. “And we’re looking for ways for those farmers to be able to build wealth, build equity, just the same way a homeowner or a landowner would without having the land be sold at market prices, without having the land be a commodity itself.”
CFAC has taken another approach, creating a website, Farm Link Montana, to help connect new farmers with retiring ones who are selling their land. Mary Ellis, the new farmer programs coordinator for the coalition’s Beginner Farmer and Rancher Program, described it as a “kind of matchmaking service.”
“The retiring farmer might be able to work with them a little bit on helping them slowly gain access to more acres or do some sort of unique partnership or lease agreement,” Ellis said. “So, it hopefully makes it just a little bit more accessible to those beginning farmers that are trying to start an operation.”
Ellis estimated between two and five matches move beyond a basic inquiry phase each year. “It seems like a small number, but for our program we see that as a pretty big success considering all the other factors in play,” she said.
CFAC’s “Field Tested. Farmer Approved.” program awards grants of up to $5,000 per farm to support new farmers as they navigate the early phases of their careers. The coalition also offers small loans for agricultural operations in partnership with Kiva, a nonprofit that crowdfunds loans for people creating social impact in their communities.
Zach Brown, of the Gallatin County Commission, has similarly worked to help early-career farmers confronted with financial barriers. In 2019, the Montana Farmer Student Loan Assistance Program bill he authored was signed into law. Through the program, the State Department of Agriculture pays off up to 50 percent of young farmers’ and ranchers’ student loans, debt which can be a large hinderance for those pursuing a life on the land.
“Basically, what it does is just provides an application process where a young farmer or rancher can apply to the state for a student loan assistance program,” Brown said. “So, kind of helping repay their student loans as part of their getting back to the farm and ranch process.”
MORGAN ROSE was part of the first group that received loan repayment assistance through the Department of Agriculture program. A fourth-generation Montana rancher, Rose was born and raised in Dillon, a small town in southwest Montana with a population around 5,000. “There’s never been a moment in my mind where I thought I would do anything else besides production agriculture,” she said.
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