Thirty miles south of Phoenix, green fields of alfalfa and pima cotton stretch toward a triple-digit sun. Hundreds of yellow butterflies dance above the purple flowers that dapple the tops of the young alfalfa stalks—to expert eyes, the flowers signal that the plants are heat-stressed and should be harvested soon.

Gila River Farms near Sacaton has been growing alfalfa and high-end cotton—which is named after the Pima people who inhabited the Gila and Salt river valleys—for 50 years. That’s a long time by current standards but merely a flash considering that the roots of Arizona’s agriculture reach back thousands of years.

Today, Native Americans are the primary operators of more than half of all farms or ranches in the state, making Arizona’s agriculture landscape unique compared with other states, according to the 2014 national agriculture census. Native American farmers sold nearly $67 million worth of agricultural products in 2012, about 2 percent of the $3.7 billion in agricultural products sold in Arizona that year, according to the Arizona Farm Bureau.

Native American farmers grow crops as diverse as tepary beans, olives, and squash, some for community use and some sent around the world. The Navajo and Hopi tribes feed their communities by focusing on cultural traditions, including dryland farming.

Centuries-old Tradition Expands Internationally

Stephanie Sauceda, interim general manager for Gila River Farms, said the farm is the original test site funded by the federal government to grow and harvest extra-long staple pima cotton, which is considered a superior strain.

Farming extends back centuries for indigenous people, she said.

“It was just something that Native American people do, not only in Gila River, but also in other tribes. That’s how we survived,” Sauceda said. “We did the hunting of the animals, we grew our corn and our wheat, and that’s how we actually survived—how our ancestors survived.”

The natural next step, she said, is to send crops to the rest of the world.

Gila River Farms primarily grows cotton and alfalfa but in recent years has branched out to increase citrus production and experiment with olive crops, said Garcia, the farm’s assistant general manager.

Sauceda said alfalfa and cotton, which are the farm’s most profitable products, end up in such places as the Philippines, Vietnam and China.

“We represent the community with our products that go out the door,” said Sauceda, who’s only the second woman to be general manager. She and her employees take pride in being able to bring their product into the global market.

“We have a really good name out there.”

The farm is growing crops on 10,000 acres, rotating alfalfa and cotton on much of that land, Sauceda said. It generates about $10 million annually.

Planting Seeds of Native Tradition

In northern Arizona, members of the Hopi Tribe maintain their cultural and traditional heritage through farming, said Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona’s School of Renewable Natural Resources and the Environment.

“For Hopi, farming is our way of life,” Johnson said.

Hopi farmers own small plots of 1 to 9 acres and use the traditional technique of dryland farming, which means crops rely only rainfall, Johnson said. Dryland farming requires seeds be planted deeper than crops for commercial use, he said.

Hopi agriculture largely is subsistence-based, meaning farmers grow food for their families rather than for commercial sale, Johnson said.

Wrangling Tradition with Women as Leaders

One hundred miles south of where the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet, three members of the Navajo Nation lead a biweekly farm-board meeting.

The two women and one man conduct the meeting in both English and Diné to be sure the older generation can understand policy changes and upcoming projects.

The farm board discusses a five-year project to update fencing, irrigation and farm equipment.

On the Navajo Reservation, farming and ranching work hand-in-hand, said Lorena Eldridge, farm board president of the tribe’s Tsaile Wheatfields-Black Rock Chapter.

Navajo farmers differentiate themselves from most U.S. farms in a key way: Nearly half of all farms on the reservation are operated primarily by a woman, Eldridge said.

According to the 2012 agriculture census, women represent about 30 percent of the total number of American farmers, but only 14 percent of farms are operated by a woman.

Still, younger generations are moving away from farming on reservations.

One third of all Native American farmers are older than 65. Eldridge is working to secure investments from the Navajo Nation government to attract younger people to farming. The farm board secured $5 million for the five-year project, which will complete its first year in December.

“For me, the farm board connects me to my history and culture,” Eldridge said.

Savoring Tradition in Native Crops

Some Native American farmers carry on crop-based traditions, whether for commercial or community uses.

Blue corn, beans, and traditional teas and berries, such as greenthread tea and sumac berries, are grown on Native American farms across Arizona.

Ramona and Terry Button pulled the native bavi bean, commonly referred to as the tepary bean, from the brink of obscurity in the late 1970s, said Velvet Button, their daughter.

Drought had put many other local farmers out of business, but Ramona Farms on the Gila River Reservation survived, in part based on reclaiming a bean that had been around for centuries.

Native American communities had “lost touch” with the tepary bean and other traditional native foods, Velvet Button said.

“We lost our market when large grocery stores moved in closer to the reservations and took over the mom and pop shops that were servicing the rural communities,” she said.

The tepary bean comes in black, white, blue speckled, and other colors, Button said, and is an important staple food for several tribes.

Ramona Farms, family owned and operated, generates 90 percent of its income from such commercial crops as cotton, wheat and alfalfa, but the Button family’s passion is promoting and educating people about indigenous foods.

Water scarcity, the proliferation of grocery stores and a lack of agriculture education and policy have been hurdles to food sovereignty that organizations such as the Indigenous Food Systems Network and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance are working to overcome.

“The huge food sovereignty movement has helped connect us once again as indigenous communities and our traditional food sources,” Button said. “Our communities are so remote that we need to be able to sustain ourselves.”

According to 2016 data published by the Arizona Department of Health Services, American Indians are disproportionately affected by chronic diseases, such as diabetes. Native Americans die at three times the rate to diabetes compared with the state’s average the report said.

Refocusing on traditional foods and incorporating them in new recipes has been a stepping stone to improving the community’s health education, Button said.

“When you see the community growing their own food, being involved in the process—it really makes a difference,” Johnson said. “When you give people access to this, you see rates of diabetes going down and you see everyone’s well-being going up.”

This article originally appeared on Cronkite News and is reprinted with permission.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org. Cronkite News, the news arm of Arizona PBS, is operated by Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications and staffed by students of the school.

It’s rare to see Lorenzen and White’s demographic taking over land. Because retiring farmers need income to sustain them through their later years, they often sell to developers or to large corporate or expanding family farms at a price that small farmers can’t afford, says Neil Thapar, an attorney with the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

“They don’t have a safety net for retirement, but from their farming career they have assets, land, equipment. They can’t sell that to next-generation farmers because [the next generation] doesn’t have access to the kind of capital they need to buy at $7,000 per acre,” he says.

That scenario is the driving force behind a steady consolidation of the nation’s farmland. A USDA report published in March found that large farms own more of the nation’s farmland compared to a few decades ago. In 1987, farms with over 2,000 acres operated 15 percent of the nation’s farmland; by 2012, that number had grown to 36 percent.

“If we don’t do something now to offer new options and new tools, all we are going to see is consolidation,” says SILT director Suzan Erem. “People tend to go with what they know. What’s out there is ‘I grow corn, my neighbor grows corn, so my land will go to my neighbor.’ So that 10,000-acre guy just went to 10,500.”

The USDA report noted that consolidation is also happening through contract farming, as large corporate firms play a coordination role in U.S. farming, particularly in hog and poultry production. Some firms—for example, in specialty crops, cattle feedlots, poultry, and hogs—operate multiple farms.

But there’s also the concern, voiced by The Oakland Institute and others, that huge investors and pension funds, such as TIAA-CREF, the Hancock Agricultural Investment Group (HAIG), and UBS Agrivest—an arm of the bank’s global real estate division—have a bottomless appetite for farmland, purchasing up parcels and adding to a lack of access and affordability.

“Over the next 20 years, 400 million acres, or nearly half of all U.S. farmland, is set to change hands as the current generation retires. With an estimated $10 billion in capital already looking for access to U.S. farmland, institutional investors openly hope to expand their holdings as this retirement bulge takes place,” according to the Institute’s 2014 report, “Down on the Farm: Wall Street: America’s New Farmer.”

The farmland-conservation advocacy group American Farmland Trust echoes this concern. The group notes that people over 65 years old own 40 percent of the nation’s farmland, and a major transfer of the agricultural land and wealth is afoot. As of now, large farms are scooping up most of that property, raising questions of what that means for the average food consumer and the small farmer.

The uncertainty that situation creates is compounded by the expiration of the 2014 Farm Bill at the end of September. Negotiations for a new farm bill are underway, but it’s unclear what it may hold for funding for some of the most effective measures in place to slow consolidation. Depending on whether the version passed by the House or the Senate—or some combination of two—is approved, funding for conservation efforts like those that are part of the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) may double or be eliminated. ACEP provides money for state and local agencies to “buy-protect-sell” farmland, which is one of the most effective tools available in preserving farmland and preventing further consolidation.

Meanwhile, a growing number of nonprofits and land trusts like SILT are using a combination of agricultural conservation easements and other measures to reduce the cost of land to make it accessible to the next generation of farmers.

The face of that generation is increasingly diverse, according to Julia Freedgood, assistant vice president of programs at American Farmland Trust.

Freedgood works with a nationwide network of ag-industry people who are developing a curriculum to teach new farmers financial skills. The old saying that the only route into farming is “through the cradle or altar” is less true these days, as more immigrants and refugees want to start farms in places like Idaho, she says. In California, many Latinx and Hmong farmworkers want their own land. So do young, college-educated people “inspired by the local food movement,” and city-dwellers inspired by the urban ag movement.

“You have this really diverse group that wants to get into farming, but they all face the barrier of land access,” Freedgood says.

Why Consolidation Is a Problem

Land consolidation is tied to power and control—it puts the wealth generated by the nation’s agriculture industry into fewer hands. This directly impacts accessibility: what and how most Americans will eat. Ultimately, the issue is structural, and opportunities for meaningful change lie in addressing the needs of retiring farmers and those entering the industry.

“It gets at the core of our economic system and challenges the notion of capitalism as the way to organize our food economy,” Thapar says. “The consolidation trend will continue until there are significant reforms on how people access capital to acquire land, and how farming can become a livelihood that people can rely on without having to sell land to retire.”

Thapar notes that change needs to happen at a policy level. The good news is that there is a patchwork of laws and funding at the state and federal level to help create that change; the bad news is that the patchwork is patchy—farmers in different states face very different options for financial support.

The federal government hasn’t enacted any sort of meaningful legislation or rules that protect and promote small-scale farming—most recently, Obama pledged and failed to do so during his presidency. The standardization that comes with commodity stock production also over time made it easier for farms to consolidate, leaving fewer operators with greater influence on policy decisions designed to promote commodity stock production. That’s helped lead to the creation of crop insurance and commodity-linked direct payments programs, for example.

A patchwork of laws and state and federal funding that helps address the situation. At the federal level, the farm bill provides $31 million for farmland preservation, but that money is often targeted for cuts by Republicans and lobbyists for big business. In Minnesota, the state provides tax breaks for those who sell or lease equipment to small farmers. Rhode Island launched a program in which it buys farmland from retiring landowners, then sells it to young or new farmers for below-market rate.

Freedgood has worked to enact easement programs in Ohio and Michigan, and is attempting to do the same in other Midwestern states such as Indiana (though she says it doesn’t currently have the “political will”). She also points to state-level programs like California Farm Link and Hudson Valley Farmland Finder, which are “actively working with agriculture service providers and land trusts, and are the brokers to help make deals happen.”

Offering capital gains tax breaks to retiring farmers who sell to younger farmers could be a strong incentive because “it can make a significant difference in the net bottom line,” says Jerry Cosgrove, farm legacy director with AFT.

Thapar suggests a pension program that provides annuity payments to independent farmers so they don’t have to rely on land and asset sales to pay for their retirement.

Making Farmland Affordable

Land trusts are offering “measures to address what can broadly be called land access and affordability issues, particularly for young or other socially disadvantaged farmers,” Cosgrove says.

The measures can be complicated, but they’re working. Cosgrove says AFT helped Zack and Annie Metzger—who are in their mid-30’s—purchase land from a retiring farmer in Troy, N.Y. The land held a conservation easement and affordability deed restriction, and its owner asked for over $650,000. The Metzgers decided to sell the easement and deed restriction to raise capital, but couldn’t do so until they owned the property. That required a bridge loan through Equity Trust. The sales of the easement and affordability deed helped pay off that loan.

The Metzgers sold the deed restriction to a local nonprofit conservation group that holds it and is obligated to enforce its terms. The state of New York provided the funding for the nonprofit to purchase easement, and it can only be sold to a nonprofit or municipality.

“We’re privileged people, we come from a great background, but not to where we have the wealth to purchase a property … with an appraised value [of around $650,000],” Zack Metzger said. On Laughing Earth Farm, the Metzgers now offer humanely and organically raised pigs, chickens, and turkey. Laughing Earth’s vegetables go to local CSAs, and they sell freshly cut wildflowers at farmers’ markets.

AFT typically purchases land or takes a land donation, puts it in an easement, seeks an affordability deed restriction, then leases the land long-term to a younger farmer. So far, about 6.5 million acres of farm and ranch land are preserved in land trusts, according to a 2017 survey conducted by AFT, which the agency says is a conservative estimate. That’s up from about 4.7 million in 2012.

In Iowa, SILT uses a similar strategy. The owner of the land on which Jupiter Ridge operates donated his deed to SILT because he’s interested in preserving it for sustainable food farming. When he decides he no longer wants to control the land (or he dies), White and Lorenzen will enter into a long-term lease with SILT. They can also own the land’s home and other buildings, and they can pass it on to younger farmers or their kids when they’re ready to retire, or SILT will place a conservation easement on the land if for some reason they must sell. Either way, the land is preserved for sustainable farming in perpetuity.

Jupiter Ridge represents 22 of 770 acres under SILT’s protection, and Erem expects that number to grow quickly.

In New Hampshire, Agrarian Trust, a nonprofit group working to increase land access for farmers, will soon begin purchasing land. It’s partnering with local land trusts that will own the properties, acquire a conservation easement, and function as a “farm commons” that will manage a 99-year lease with a young farmer. Agrarian Trust will support and have some level of controlling interest over the local nonprofit. It’s partly focusing on regions in which there is little in the way of agricultural conservation efforts, like the Southeast.

Poudre Valley Community Farms in Colorado is using a slightly different model. The group just made its first purchase: a 109-acre farm with a five-bedroom house, corrals, and outbuildings for $1.3 million. Poudre Valley is controlled by a multi-stakeholder cooperative that board member Zia Zybko characterizes as “truly community supported”—if the farm has a problem, the cross-section of the community that invested in the farm works together to find a solution.

Ultimately, it’s going to take a coordinated effort at the federal level and among those working at the local level, instead of a patchwork of independent agencies operating toward a similar goal Thapar says. “There are some systemic changes that need to happen, and there needs to be a broader coalition working on this,” he notes. Specifically, he suggests reviving the USDA AELOS survey that retrieves landowner information and demographics, farmland rent control policies, re-funding federal and state land preservation programs, promoting state-based land ownership surveys, and providing reliable funding mechanisms for land trusts and land cooperatives.

But beyond that, Thapar says, there needs a collective philosophical shift away from land being viewed as a “financial asset—something that you own to make money from in the future.”