Revitalizing the farm

Kathleen Smith, CEO of Life Essentials and a farmer herself, says she has some keys to revitalizing the disappearing farmer. One of them is, I think farmers need to plan a better succession for when they're gone and their family takes over. If you don't plan it right, the head of the household passes and the taxes and such make it to where the farm has to be sold. Just pay the taxes. I know just on the farm, when we inherited it from our parents, we had over $150000 in taxes to pay and we divided that among four of us. And luckily, I have a job other than that so I can take it. But we had to sell some farmland again, just pay for the taxes on it. And that's kind of a hard thing to do. The other thing a lot of them are selling off to the conglomerate type farming operations. I know here in Indiana that is one thing that is taking up the small farms. I always say a small farm is 500 acres or less. Some areas of the country, you would think maybe a thousand acres or less. And as far as ranches and such go taking that up, they're offering good prices for the farmland and sometimes they're just tired of farming. But I think it's a succession for the family to take over the farm, the tax problems that they have, the new equipment and such if they could just find a better loans that are help from government as far as that goes. A lot of people don't realize that the farmers are the one that feeds the country. It's agonizing, but a lot of kids think that their food comes from the grocery store down the street.