Last week (March 19th-25th) was National Agriculture Week. And as Tom Fricke of the Vermilion County Farm Bureau was letting everyone know; you very well may have stopped in a restaurant where the placemats at your table were provided by the Vermilion County Farm Bureau. And their main message, from information provided by the Illinois Farm Families Coalition, was that 96 percent of the farms in Illinois are still family owned farms.
Four decades ago, going back to the first Farm Aid Concert in Champaign in September of 1985, there was fear that the family farm was dying and would soon be gone, overtaken by major corporations. Looking back, Fricke says; yes, smaller family farms especially were in trouble. But as the years have gone by, family owned farms became larger and stronger; as everything around them changed as well.
AUDIO: People’s misperception maybe was that if a farm becomes larger it must be corporate, and it’s necessarily the case. Farms have gotten bigger over that 40 year time; but it’s because of technology; because of advancements in equipment. Family farms don’t look the same as they did 40 years ago, but they are still family owned and operated.
Fricke says one reason the Illinois Family Farms Coalition decided to run the campaign about 96 percent of Illinois farms being family farms is that a survey they did a while back showed most people believing the total was under 50 percent. So they decided to set the record straight.
