Posted on 02/15/2026 6:14:09 AM PST by Fury
MARSHALL, Ill.—Don Guinnip is running out of time.
The fifth-generation farmer still wakes early each morning to tend to roughly 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans and 40 cattle. But four decades of grueling work, a bout with prostate cancer and surgery to replace both of his hips with titanium implants have taken their toll.
The 74-year-old estimates he can maintain the current workload for a couple more years.
Under the gaze of generations of Guinnips in black-and-white photos, he gathers his four siblings to chart the future of their family’s farm—and contemplates a day when a Guinnip no longer cares for the land that runs along Guinnip Road.
The natural choice to take over, his son and daughter, left for college and now work in corporate fields. His siblings made the same decision years earlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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The temptation to sell the land for development is very great.
In our area, good farmland in tracts around 100 acres sell for $15,000 per acre. It’s hard to service the debt on that by growing crops.
High-demand areas like Lancaster County often see prices between $18,000 and $35,000+ per acre.
I’ll take it
It’s not just in farming, in many cases children do not want to take over the parents business, usually due to the long hours.
I used to head to NW Kansas to pheasant hunt with a couple buddies. The farm where we stayed was owned by the town’s bank president by day, and farmer before daylight and after the bank closed.
Didn’t I read this story fifty years ago?
Here in Lebanon County they are preserving farm land.
Lancaster County: Nebraska? Pennsylvania? South Carolina?
We have an Ag school. About half of the Ag students are women. The butcher shop on campus is all women.
It’s hard, never-ending work that is not very financially rewarding. I wouldn’t want to do it. Of course, when the SHTF, which it inevitably will, farmers will be best positioned to weather the storm.
Never thought I’d be happy about being old and close to the end.
Pennsylvania
You mean “WORK” as opposed to “WOKE”……
Agree. “farmers will be best positioned to weather the storm”
Having about 1,000 horse & buggy Amish as neighbors helps even more.
Ezekiel 7:
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord. They shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels, because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity.
We’re still deciding what to do with our farm when we are both gone. We have no kids to leave it to, but luckily there are other farm families around us and those kids are staying.
The two oldest (twin boys) are both away at College right now, but still only an hour away, so they come home and help with the horse breeding operation on weekends and school breaks. Their folks hired two young men to help them in-between. The boys are getting business degrees and are coming back to make their family farm even MORE successful than it already is.
The dairy farm has a daughter and a nephew who are both interested in keeping the family farm going. It is in the 4th generation, now. They rent crop land from us.
If Beau passes before me, I plan on selling the farmhouse and 48 acres (pasture & woods) the barn, etc., keeping a spot to build a small house for myself, and living off the crop land rental money. If I pass before Beau - it ain’t my problem anymore. The only way he’s leaving this place is feet first, LOL!
We’re LUCKY to have this kind of problem, actually. A lot of hard work by us both, has gone into this homestead.
This is one of those “Let’s face it the farming industry is dying so why don’t we just let the government take it over?” type articles. “Oh well, what are ya gonna do?” Right?
Replace “farming” with “insurance.”
“Oh, well, medical care is so expensive that not even rich people can afford it anymore!”
“I know! Let’s let the government take it over!”
Result: Obamacare. (And now us folks over 65 are FORCED to pay into Medicare! See how that works? I’m an outlaw but Mr K - not the one on this forum - got his arm twisted and now he GETS BILLED at almost $300 a month.)
If it wasn’t for government interference, there would be lots more incentive for youth to stay in the farming/ranching business.
Amen!
The problem (right now) is paying off huge debt with no cash flow.
Land, machinery, and maintenance costs are through the roof.
Crop prices are 40-50 % lower than years past. This is like buying a house you can barely afford, then having your pay check cut in half.
Fuel prices have come down, that is good, but not significant.
This may be a return to the eighties where guys took on a second job to keep the farm.
Less rural states are full of aspiring young farmers who complain there’s no available land that they can afford.
A little creativity could solve this. Instead of rent-to-own, there could be farmhand-to-own, with work to turn more land organic. Build some modest homes so the old farmers don’t need to move. A new farm homesteading movement could be born.
What I see, where I live, is that when the farmland is “developed”, its rich farm soil is removed and sold off. It is replaced by rock and sand.
There is no going back.
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