Century Farms list adds 36 in Ozarks

Tucker’s 160-acre farm near Willard is one of 36 southwest Missouri farms added to the list of Century Farms compiled annually by the University of Missouri Extension. There are now 6,676 farms on the list, which started in 1976, though farms that no longer qualify are not removed from the list unless the Extension is notified.

The list includes farms that have been family-owned, through direct descendants, for 100 years or more and have at least 40 acres of the original land still producing farming income.

Tucker, who has more than 300 head of cattle along with fields for hay production, pasture and structural oak lumber, said keeping the farm in the family is important.

“Keeping the land has been a priority for every generation of my family that has been involved,” Tucker said. “We are people who love the land, the Ozarks, and in particular, in my case, maintaining the rural nature of the area is a high priority.”

Dwindling farmers

While family farmers are dedicated, they also are becoming scarce.

In the last decade, the number of operating farms in Missouri is down 5 percent to 105,000 farms in 2006, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s down 57 percent from when the service began keeping statistics in 1950.

Meanwhile, farm sizes are increasing, illustrating that corporate farms are gaining market share. The average Missouri farm now covers 287 acres, up 5 percent from 1996 and 93 percent from 1950, NASS reports.

Larger farms, according to Missouri Extension regional agronomy specialist Tim Schnakenberg, are the result of both a need for more land to make a living and the continuously increasing impact of corporate farming.

“Large entities have investors,” Schnakenberg said. “If multiple investors are willing to step up to the plate and provide cash for investments, they can pay higher prices to get the job done. The small farmer doesn’t have that option.”

For family operations, farming is increasingly challenging.

“It takes a lot of tenacity to (manage a farm) over several generations,” said Brent Carpenter, policy analyst for Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. “Farming folks have to be tough enough to make it through the lean years, and there can be several in a row. You have to be willing to give up everything except that tract of ground to hand it down from one generation to another.”

Sometimes even the land must go, when farmers are faced with economic decisions. More developers are seeking rural land, Schnakenberg noted, driving up prices.

“They divide up land, and when you divide up a farm, you can get more per acre, which drives the cost of land up,” he said. “If there’s a young person that wants to get into farming, they either have to inherit the land or get a special deal from family – buying the land is impossible.”

Outside income

Tucker said it’s “almost impossible” for small family farms to generate enough to be self-sustaining without some form of outside income. That’s why Tucker has a full-time job as president and CEO of the Springfield-based International Association of Fairs & Expositions, a job that grew from his former career as a lawyer; IAFE was one of his clients.

Tucker considers his work an extension of his role as a farmer.

“The education system is not doing the kind of job it needs to do to educate the general public (about farming),” Tucker said. “Right now, less than 2 percent of the society is engaged in production agriculture, so 98 percent of the population is directly or indirectly making decisions that affect agriculture while knowing nothing about it. Fairs are the last best opportunity to educate the public about production agriculture.”

Analyst Carpenter said Tucker’s situation is no longer unique.

“If farms stay small, in all likelihood they have some other source of income,” he said. “It depends on the productivity of the farm and what other enterprises they can be involved in, and that depends on the local markets.”

For some area farmers, such as the Headlees, the obstacles are too great.

The Headlee family had owned 80 acres in Greene County since 1859, but now lease the land to others to use as pasture for grazing animals.

Pauline Highfill recalls a childhood of helping her father, Frank Headlee, with his dairy operations.

“They milked I forget how many hundred head of cattle before they had milking machines,” Highfill said of her father and his farmhands. “And then he farmed at the same time.”

Highfill’s father lived and farmed his land past the age of 90, and he died from injuries related to an accident that happened while working the land he loved.[[In-content Ad]]