The Resettling of Rural America
Cultivating New Opportunity

Ross WIlken planted 18 acres of organic black beans that will be sold this fall to Chipotle. Health minded consumers are driving large food companies to buy local and organic.  
The lost art of cultivation has now gone high tech. Whereas conventional farming uses chemical herbicides, organic crops must be cultivated. New technologies such as electronic row sensors and GPS systems are helping to increase organic food production.    


The national food landscape is changing with the growth of more local and organic food markets. This is a widespread, generational change that is impacting both urban and rural America. Large food companies are contracting for local and organic foods that can be economically scaled. Our farmers are positioning themselves for a tsunami of consumer demand for healthy and nutritionally diverse foods. You don't have to look past your local farmer's market to see what is happening. Young farmers like Ross Wilken are bringing new technology to organic farming practices and growing edible foods on landscapes that once were the realm of conventional, chemical and commodity agriculture. 

In addition to growing a new crop of organic black beans that is headed to  Chipotle this fall, the Wilken family also contracted to grow 80 acres of organic pumpkins for Seneca Foods (Libby organic products). These two markets are supplementing and diversifying the family's existing farm business, which includes hay sold to a local organic dairy that supplies the Kroger grocery chain. This is not just happening in Iroquois County, but across Illinois, the Midwest and North America. Young, sustainable farmers are responding to this opportunity and looking for more land to grow their food business. In fifty years of watching local farmers, I have never seen anything like it. 

 

Many old farmsteads were abandoned by the last generation of conventional farmers. Next generation sustainable farmers are now resettling these empty farmsteads and growing new families and food businesses.    
Iroquois Valley Farms is working to make this happen.

Our company will soon be selling some of the original 142 acre farm to Ross WIlken. He is hoping to purchase about 60 acres and build a home on the 3 acre abandoned farm site included thereon (see pictures below). We have been developing a corporate policy that farmers earn the option to purchase after seven years of successful tenancy on the land. Now we can put this into practice since the Wilkens have reached this milestone and we are excited to help resettle this farm and finalize the sale.

If there is one question that I hear from young farmers, it's the query of whether they will be able to buy the land someday. There is a crisis of land access for young farmers that we are working to resolve. We have a solid track record of solving this problem and are receiving farmland purchase opportunities for farmers from Iowa to New York, including a few that need funding in the next 60 days. Since Iroquois Valley Farms is the first company to connect investors with organic farmland, we are the leader in this field. As for the opportunity, where else can one invest in a real asset that is 100% leased, grows healthy food and naturally increases in productivity every year?


 

Pictured above left, the "less traveled" road to our first farm/farmstead purchased in 2007, long abandoned and now soon to be the home of Ross Wilken, a fourth generation organic farmer.  

 

Right, Sophie Miller, aspiring culinary student and youngest daughter, highlighting the current use of the old farmstead as a hay field.         

 

For more information on our company, please visit (www.iroquoisvalleyfarms.com).  

David Miller, Co-Founder and CEO
Iroquois Valley Farms LLC
PO Box 267
Wilmette, Illinois 60091
847 736-0076
www.iroquoisvalleyfarms.com