Agricultural Land

$15,000 a Mile: The Brutal Math of Wildfire Recovery in Cattle Country

Tue, 26 May 2026 19:16:25 GMT

In the Nebraska Sandhills, the cost of a wildfire is measured in more than just scorched acres; it is measured at $15,000 to $18,000 per mile of fence and the potential end of a family legacy. For Joe McGinley, a rancher and volunteer fire chief, the Morrill Fire blaze that swept through western Nebraska in March was a “perfect storm” of abundant fuel and violent winds.

As the dust settles on the largest wildfire in Nebraska state history, McGinley warns the industry is facing a sobering reality: with an aging rancher population and astronomical recovery costs, the decisions made in the wake of the smoke will determine who stays in the cattle business and who walks away for good.

Nearly 11 weeks after the Morrill Fire tore through nearly half of Garden County normal looks very different in scorched Nebraska Sandhills. The heaviness, McGinley says, is anything but gone.

“A good soaking rain would sure make everyone feel a whole lot better,” he says.

A Fire Like No Other

When the Morrill Fire swept toward Garden County on March 12, McGinley’s cattle were grazing on corn stalks. But the Sandhills native, who serves as chief of the Lisco Fire Department, didn’t hesitate. He traded his cowboy hat for a fire helmet and jumped into action alongside fellow volunteers — working nearly 16 hours straight on the first day alone.

“We were the first ones on the scene north of Broadwater for Garden County, for the Garden County Rural Fire,” he recalls.

What they encountered was unlike anything most had seen. Winds howled at 50 mph with gusts reaching 70, driving the fire across the landscape with terrifying speed. By the time darkness fell on Thursday night, the situation had turned desperate.

“We saw a wall of fire coming up behind us,” McGinley says. “In the dark, we could see it coming. And it came over the hill, kind of like a fire tornado behind us.”

With no other options, McGinley and his partner backed their truck into already-burned ground — a tactic known as “backing into the black” — where scorched earth offers the only refuge from an advancing fire. From there, they watched helplessly.

“We were the only ones there,” he recalls. “We were hopeless, you know, we were overwhelmed.”

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Doing the Job Without Recognition

Despite being overwhelmed, the crew pressed on. In one moment that McGinley still carries with him, they spotted fire creeping toward a couple’s farmstead. The homeowners were elsewhere fighting fire. McGinley and his partner moved in and extinguished the flames without ever introducing themselves.

The couple later posted their gratitude on social media, thanking the unknown volunteers who saved their home. They never found out who it was.

“They still don’t know who it was,” McGinley says, “but that’s okay.”

The crew continued working through Friday and into Saturday, when four single-engine aerial spray planes — flying out of Ogallala — joined the fight. McGinley helped coordinate nearly 37 loads of water from the airport. The aerial support, he says, proved critical.

The fire was finally brought under control Saturday night — not so much by firefighting alone, but because there was simply nothing left to burn.

“To tell you the truth, there wasn’t really much left to burn,” he says, with a sad laugh. “It was from here north for 20 miles. There’s nothing left.”

McGinley says when the wildfire broke out near Broadwater, he didn’t just see a tactical challenge; he saw his community’s livelihood at risk. From the quiet heroism of saving an anonymous neighbor’s farmstead to the heartbreak of shipping cattle hundreds of miles away in search of grass, McGinley’s experience serves as a testament to the resilience of a “hard country” and the tough people who refuse to let a disaster have the final word.

(Haley Bickelhaupt)

The Long Road Back

McGinley was fortunate compared to many of his neighbors. He lost no buildings and no animals. But standing near a charred fence line, the scale of destruction stretching 20 miles in either direction, the losses are impossible to ignore.

The barbed wire along burned fence rows has already turned rust-colored — a sign of what’s coming.

“In two or three years, that will become very brittle,” McGinley explains. “That’s the nature of fire.”

He says miles and miles of fence will need to be replaced across the county, at an estimated cost of $15,000 to $18,000 per mile.

But fencing, McGinley says, isn’t even the biggest problem. Feed is.

The region has received only three-tenths of an inch of moisture since September. Burned summer grazing pastures won’t recover for years — and only then with adequate rainfall. Garden County currently sits in D4, the most extreme drought classification.

“They’re saying it should take 16 to 20 inches to bring us out of D4,” McGinley notes.

In response, ranchers across the region are making hard choices: leasing pasture ground in South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri and eastern Nebraska; dry-lotting cattle through the summer; or selling animals outright into a volatile market.

“I keep telling a lot of people there’s a lot of short-term decisions being made for long-term problems,” McGinley stresses.

(Haley Bickelhaupt)

The End of an Era

Perhaps the most sobering observation McGinley offers isn’t about the fire at all — it was about the people it hit hardest.

The ranching population in the Sandhills of Nebraska skews older. For some, a disaster of this magnitude won’t be something they rebuild from. It will be the moment they step away from a way of life their families have known for generations.

“It’ll be the end of an era for a lot of people,” McGinley summarizes. “I hate to see that.”

Yet even in the face of that reality, McGinley holds onto something the Sandhills have always produced alongside cattle: resilience.

“This is a resilient country,” he says. “It’s a hard country. It’s some of the best cattle country in the world and a resilient, tough people.”

And when the grain hits the feed bunk each morning and the gates creak open at dawn, McGinley keeps showing up — doing his job, not for recognition, but because that’s what the land and the people out here have always demanded.

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Astonishing Arrowhead Discovery: 115 Native American Blades Found in Mississippi Creek

Tue, 26 May 2026 11:46:39 GMT

Reaching beneath a shelf of white sand in the curve of a forgotten creek, Gerry Powers’ hands touched the fringes of time. Sight unseen, sifting through a foot of sediment, his fingertips suddenly danced across the flaked edges of countless stone blades piled like pancakes. A motherlode hidden for 5,000-plus years. Blind luck or outdoor intuition, Powers uncovered one of most astonishing Native American artifact discoveries in history—a cache of 115 quartzite blades ranging from 3” to 7” in length.

“It felt like a dream,” he describes. “I couldn’t pull them all out. I had to go sit on the bank and rest.”

How did Powers discover the stunning trove? Some creek walkers create their own luck.

Cottonmouths and Skeeters
With the heat index percolating beyond 100 degrees on a sweltering August day in east-central Mississippi’s Lauderdale County, a skip from the Bama line, Powers suited up with tennis shoes, blue jeans, and t-shirt for a bout of creek hunting. He grabbed a backpack, probe, and shovel with holes drilled in the scoop, tossed the lot into his truck, and drove to a gas station outside Meridian for a meet-up with a pair of seasoned artifact-hunting buddies, Mike and Bobby. Be there at 1 p.m. or be left to the couch.

Powers’ intact cache on display for public viewing.

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

Raised on rural backroads, and retired after decades in welding, pipefitting, and crane operation, Powers has made thousands of stone tool finds across his lifetime and carries a highly esteemed reputation in Mississippi archeology circles. However, on this Sunday afternoon in 2011, his crosshairs were zeroed on old bottles, not arrowheads.

“I started out as a bottle hunter in my teens,” describes Powers, 65. “We’d commonly find old lumber camps just walking in the woods. Then I moved onto arrowheads after finding one while hoeing beans, and from there, I hunted farmland. Eventually, as some of the farmland converted to pineland or houses or changed hands, I switched to creeks. Been there ever since.”

Piling into a single vehicle, the hopeful trio rumbled to a virgin creek, new on their list of haunts, and moved 200 yards up the ribbon, poking and prodding with no success. Too much sand and too little time. Change of plans.

They bounced to a second creek, a low-energy stream on private land, likely played out on arrowheads, but a reliable repository of antique pop and medicine bottles. In stifling temps, they walked into a wooly realm of cottonmouths and skeeters. Sticky. Steamy. Humid.

Narrowing to jump-across width in many spots, cluttered with fallen trees, and generally running ankle-high except for occasional deep water along sleepy bends, the creek was bedded by gray clay, topped by intermittent stretches of white sand.

“Mike and Bobby were familiar with this creek and had found some good arrowheads in it, but we were just hoping to score some bottles,” Powers recalls. “We were going along and hadn’t even reached the stretch where we expected to find bottles. Of course, an arrowhead would be nice, but we pretty much believed this creek might be hunted out. Never been so wrong.”

Secrets Under Sand
Moving up the channel, the threesome hit belly-high water in a curve clogged by blowdowns and clutter. They climbed out of the water and into the woods, intent on bypassing the tangled corner. Standing atop the creek, frustration building over the navigational slog and lack of artifact finds, Powers spoke too soon: “I don’t think we need to come back here again.”

Part of the hoard displayed just after discovery.

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

Five minutes later, he was pulling blades in one of the most startling Native American finds on record.

Shortcut traversed, Powers slid back into the creek. Standing in several inches of water running over 1’ of sand, he maneuvered into a narrow cubby along the bank with standing room for a single person. Into the sand, Powers inserted a probe—a 4’ rod made from a CB whip, with a makeshift wooden handle, and waited for a telltale ring.

Paydirt. Except, it wasn’t the expected clink of antique bottle glass.

Instead, a clean, distinct chime rode up the probe. Tink. Tink. Not glass.

Powers’ heart jumped. “Whoah. That was no bottle,” he describes. “As soon as I tapped it, all three of us knew it was likely an artifact. That was the sound of Tallahatta quartzite.”

A fine-grained stone, often colored white-gray (almost silver), Tallahatta quartzite is found in bands across several southeast Mississippi counties.

“If you’re probing here for Indian artifacts, you’re basically looking for flakes, the small pieces of rock left behind when Indians made arrowheads. If you’re close to a site where Indians lived, and you stick that probe in the sand, you’ll hit those flakes and it’ll sound like you’re sticking metal through broken glass,” Powers details. “Then you can put your shovel in, and you might get a dozen or more flakes on every pull. That’s when you know you’re in the right spot and you’re fixin’ to find something.”

“And, if you directly hit an actual artifact with the probe, that has a distinctive sound, too, especially quartzite, because the Indians have removed the cortex off the rock, and it gives off a clear sound. In this area, there’s no chert gravel, so if you tap something, you’ll know it’s probably not a false read. With experience, you can probe down in the sand and know what you’re hitting by the sound.”

Expectations building, Powers kneeled and reached into the sand, feeling his way down. Touching bottom, he felt the contours of a rock held firmly in the creek bed, as if the stone had wormed its way into the clay. He waved his hands back and forth through sand and water, creating a pocket of space.

“I got my hand down there to it, and I could feel it was an artifact, but it stayed stuck. I kept wiggling and gently pulled.”

Out of the creek popped a 4”-by-3” Tallahatta quartzite blade beauty, seen by human eyes for the first time in 5,000-plus years. It was a pre-form, an unfinished specimen awaiting final knapping into a knife, spearpoint, or skinning blade. Powers’ pulse surged. The pre-form hinted at industry, stockpiling, or trade. Translated: One pre-form potentially meant more.

Once again, Powers dropped his probe into the sand. Tink. Tink. Thirty seconds later, only 1’ from the first, he pulled a second pre-form. And then another. Five minutes onward, following an artifact chain through the sand, Powers extracted six pre-forms in succession, each 4” to 5” in length.

“Take a blade by itself and it becomes another artifact find,” Powers explains. “But all together, as a cache bigger than any I’ve ever heard about it my region, that’s where the true magic is.”

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

“By now, Mike and Bobby had come over and were just watching. Remember, there was only room for one of us in this space, and I was still on my knees.”

The trail of pre-forms led 6’ upstream from the original find to a spot behind a fallen 10”-diameter log. Tension building, heart pounding, Powers continued to probe.

“All of a sudden, I hit something that felt different. I didn’t assume anything, and I couldn’t be certain, but figured maybe it’d be a single, very large biface blade. Whatever it was—it was something really, really big.

The creek was about to give up a secret: El Dorado beneath Mississippi sands.

Wishing Well
Supporting his weight with one hand, and reaching with the other, Powers worked his way down through the sand and touched an impossibility. Stacks of pre-forms.

“People call me a great arrowhead hunter, but truth is I’m just a guy that goes, looks, and learns,” Powers says.

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

“It was kind of unbelievable. I started moving sand out of the way and I could feel them. Blade edge after edge. My thumb and fingers felt them neatly on top of each other. There was no way to count them. I couldn’t see’em, but there was no doubt about what I was touching.”

Locked in on the surreal moment, trying to assure himself the discovery was no illusion, Powers spoke his thoughts: It feels like there’s a thousand of them down here.

Pulling his hand from the sand, Powers lifted out six pre-forms. And then he did it again. And again. Hand-crafted blades exposed to daylight for the first time in millennia.

Not only had Powers found a phenomenally large cache, but the collection was positioned precisely as it had been buried or lost thousands of years past. “Literally, the blades were stacked in a container shape,” Powers notes. “Whether that was a woven basket or leather pack or something else, they were in place just like the container was still there. The container had rotted away and they’d either sunk into the top of clay or a natural hole, and held tight.”

Dazed by the gravity of the find, Powers lost sense of time as the threesome began lining up pre-form blades on the bank. “Everything blurred. I stopped pulling and asked Bobby for a count: ‘How many have we found? About 20?’”

“Hell no. There’s 42—so far.”

“Well, there’s a bunch more of’em in here.”

Kneeling, pulling, and bending over the log, Powers was spent by the effort. He reversed course and sat on the opposite bank, replaced at the honey hole by Mike. Next pull? Twelve more pre-forms. The honey hole turned into a wishing well.

“We worked in shifts and weren’t even probing anymore; just pulling. It was crazy, crazy, crazy. In the past, I’ve found separated pieces close to each other that I knew were part of a cache, but this was something else. This was so hard to describe, and there were a few minutes where I honestly questioned if my friends were playing a trick on me.”

“It was crazy, crazy, crazy ... This was so hard to describe, and there were a few minutes where I honestly questioned if my friends were playing a trick on me.”

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

No trick. The creek walkers packed 89 blades as gingerly as possible into their backpacks and toted out the haul, returning over the next several days for a grand total of 115 blades.

But why was the mass of blades beneath the water and sands of a creek?

Buried, Lost, or Forgotten
High volume cache finds are rare. In June 2025, Ben McGhee beat the odds in a northeast Missouri soybean field and found 51 North blades . In 2008, 165 stone tools making up the Nelson cache were found beneath a tree in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Also in 2008, the Mahaffy cache , containing 83 artifacts, was found by landscapers in Boulder, Colo. In 1982, a farmer plowing a field in Portage County, Ohio uncovered the Lukens cache , composed of 356 teardrop-shaped bifaces.

As for Powers’ cache, who knapped the pre-form blades?

“They’ve been identified as likely being Middle Archaic, at about 8,000 to 5,000 years back,” he explains. “The makers would have been hunter-gatherers and we don’t even know their tribe name or what language they spoke.”

Powers found a single hammer stone with the cache. He suggests the same knapper made most of the cache, but at a different location within Lauderdale County.

In 2025, Ben McGhee found 51 North blades in a Missouri soybean field.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin McGhee Outdoors)

“Tallahatta quartzite is sourced locally, and it makes sense that this stone came from bedded quartzite layers within our geography,” Powers says. “I personally know the location of a layer that is 2’ thick and about 50 acres long. The Indians would go to the quartzite quarry sites and break down the rock to pre-forms, saving themselves a serious amount of weight to carry. Those layered bands are exposed generally on high outcrops, but I found the cache on lower flat ground, so that tells me it was transported likely on someone’s back. Whether for trade or further manufacture, no one knows. Maybe both.”

“Most of the big blades in the cache have flakes knocked off in the same spots, so I suspect the same Indian made most of them, and he was good. Really good. As to why they were in the creek, arrowheads are there because they’ve eroded over time into the water from habitation sites. The cache, at some point, was close to that creek flow, and when the creek moved or flooded, the cache was either buried, lost, or forgotten. That’s a question that’ll never be answered.”

The Time Machine
Was Powers destined to be the finder of the historic 115-specimen cache? Despite finding thousands of stone tools, he modestly attributes the cache discovery to blind luck, but acknowledges a seeker must create that luck.

“I don’t have any illusions. I walked into the creek and almost sat on top of the stuff. It’s just that simple. People call me a great arrowhead hunter, but truth is I’m just a guy that goes, looks, and learns. Then again, if you want something magical to happen, it won’t be from your living room. You’ve got to get out there and put the time and effort in to make the opportunity for luck to strike. Maybe it’s a lesson in perseverance.”

Long term, what will happen to the Lauderdale County cache? Powers isn’t settled on the future of the blades—except for one absolute. Unity. No breakup of the 115-blade cache allowed.

“If you want something magical to happen,” Powers says, “it won’t be from your living room.”

(Photo courtesy of Gerry Powers)

“That’s the wonder of it,” he concludes. “Take a blade by itself and it becomes another artifact find. But all together, as a cache bigger than any I’ve ever heard about it my region, that’s where the true magic is.”

Fifteen years after making the historic discovery, how does Powers remember the find?

“I loved every minute and it still seems like a dream. But I’m not special and I didn’t deserve to find it. For me, this has always been about the feelings you get from the adventure, camaraderie, and hunt. It’s the closest you can ever get to crawling in a time machine.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

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Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting

Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam

Road to Hell: Illinois Farm Owner Fights County Project and Future Development

Tue, 19 May 2026 11:43:16 GMT

The road to farm hell is a straightaway, contends landowner Sandra Dannehold.

Winding rural curves of Country Club Lane, amid gentle rolling hills in southwestern Illinois, snake against Dannehold’s 178-year-old operation. Bucolic and picturesque.

In a nutshell, the city fathers of Waterloo and Monroe County want to straighten the road and pour on asphalt.

“It doesn’t take a data center or a solar farm to take farm ground out of production,” Dannehold says. “All it takes is local government with a bad idea. A half-mile road in the wrong place can do it.”

“I’m doing everything in my power to stop a road that will make it too dangerous to farm here, and I think I know the ultimate purpose of the road: development. Government makes more tax money off residences than farms.”

“My only goal is to make sure we and our neighbors can farm here, and preserve this ground and habitat, as we have for decades,” she adds. “This would be easier for all of us if we were just willing to jump on the ‘sell-the-farm bandwagon,’ get our money out, and let them do what they want. But they have one problem they can’t get around and they don’t understand. There are some landowners who don’t care about the money.”

Save a Life, Save a Farm
Thirty miles southeast of the heart of St. Louis, across the Mississippi River, sits Waterloo, the seat of Monroe County. Despite an overall population decline in Illinois, Waterloo is growing. However, the growth comes with a cost, according to Dannehold: erasure of an historic German farming community identity by cookie-cutter subdivisions.

Beyond Waterloo’s city limits, she shepherds 300 acres of picturesque cropland, with grain bins, machine sheds, and cattle buildings (a small beef herd)—rooted to family ownership since 1848.

“I’m not trusting lives, livelihoods, our history, and our future, to the county,” Dannehold explains.

(Photo by Dannehold Farms)

The 300 acres are split into two tracts by tar-and-chip Country Club Lane. One tract, at 140 acres, has been in her father’s family since 1879. It includes Dannehold’s house (in which she and her brother, Terry, grew up), and is dubbed “Pop’s Farm.” The other, at 160 acres, a stone’s throw south across two-lane Country Club Lane, is called “Mom’s Farm,” and was purchased by the maternal branch of the family in 1848.

If Waterloo and Monroe County officials get their druthers, the curving road rubbing against Dannehold’s property will become a paved, straight shot connecting nearby subdivisions and a country club—progress, in local government’s eyes, to relieve traffic congestion from subdivision creep.

Dannehold, an attorney by trade, now retired, can scrap gravel with the sharpest minds: extreme intelligence matched by mettle. Her brother, Terry, a Ph.D. in physics, made his bones at Bell Labs. They have joint ownership of the operation. The pair are in lockstep regarding the future of Dannehold Farms.

Their situation initially developed when Dannehold and other landowners first learned of the road project via an article in the local Republic-Times (June 16, 2021). “The level of disrespect was unconscionable,” she says. “The county felt it had no reason to contact us for input or even be courteous.”

The county’s decision was made, Dannehold contends, without looking at the associated properties, or studying the hydrology or traffic. “It was a line drawn on a map at a desk.”

Six months later, in January 2022, Monroe County engineer Aaron Metzger sent Dannehold a letter:

I am writing to inform you of the County and City of Waterloo’s plan to move forward with the extension of Rogers Street North…

At this time, we are considering Phase I, the extension of Rogers Street north approximately 2500 ft. and the realignment of Country Club Lane, terminating at the Rogers Extension.

Work adjacent to your property will be limited to the tie-in to the existing Country Club Lane, whether additional right-of-way will be required is unclear at this time.

“Farmers’ heritages and futures were reduced to a ‘Phase I’ of a road plan with a few keystrokes. It’s insulting. And it’s incompetence to think this will all be fine,” Dannehold says. “Someone is going to get killed. Pump in speeding traffic where tractors, combines, sprayers, grain trucks, trailers, and tanks of anhydrous ammonia turn in and out?”

Metzger, in an email response to Agweb.com, contends road straightening would not create a higher volume of traffic. “I do not anticipate that the project will directly increase traffic in front of her (Dannehold) property. I have no data that reflects that straight roads are more dangerous than windy/hilly roads. Speed enforcement is a law enforcement issue.”

Dannehold’s driveway emerges at a corner between the driveway to Pop’s Farm and the edge of Mom’s Farm, at the top of a hill. The corner has a posted speed limit of 15 mph. It acts as a speed bump—vehicles can enter and exit Dannehold’s driveway safely. The overall 40-mph speed limit of Country Club Lane would not change, according to Monroe County plans, but the buffer from the corner would be gone.

“Asphalt and a straightaway at the top of a hill? That speed limit will be ignored.” Dannehold adds: “Not to mention the high volume of water that will flow downhill from a half mile of straightway and could wash out the only road to my home, sheds, and bins.”

Pop’s Farm is accessed by a quarter-mile rock driveway splitting two parcels Dannehold doesn’t own. The new road would be on a slope overlooking that driveway.

“They think because they only want a ‘sliver’ of my ground at the beginning of my driveway that I shouldn’t be concerned about traffic or water? I shouldn’t be concerned about being killed just turning out of my driveway? But this is about development,” she says. “My guess is that they think that if we can’t farm it, maybe we’ll sell it to developers. They probably think: ‘Those people over there are all old anyway.’”

Where Goes the Water?
Dannehold and a neighbor have major concerns over water control. Initially, the county insisted water would adequately funnel through a 42” culvert, installed decades earlier by Dannehold’s father, Harold, beneath the farm driveway.

“I do not anticipate that the project will directly increase traffic in front of her (Dannehold) property,” says county engineer Aaron Metzger. “I have no data that reflects that straight roads are more dangerous than windy/hilly roads.”

(Photo Google Maps)

“I told the engineer, ‘That culvert’s not big enough now.’ He finally hired an outside engineer which we think cost $10,000 or $15,000, and sure enough, I was right. The culvert was described as ‘significantly undersized.’ Now, the county has come back with assurances about detention ponds on the neighbor’s property, and that won’t be cheap for taxpayers. I’ll stick with common sense and the knowledge we’ve acquired over generations about how water moves here. I’m not trusting lives, livelihoods, our history, and our future, to the county. When we ask questions, they either have no answers or their answers are wrong.”

Metzger responds: “I have employed a consulting engineer to design the project, including detention of stormwater runoff leaving the site. I have asked them to follow the County Code which requires a 10% reduction in stormwater runoff from the existing condition.”

Monroe County’s potential construction work, Dannehold says, comes with no guarantees upon completion. “The county has ignored letters from attorneys up to now. They will ignore the letters that tell them the road has washed out, too.”

After five years of waiting, and “periodic, unpredictable communications,” the county has provided no schedule of operations, Dannehold, 68, says: “It verges on elder abuse.”

In early 2026, hoping to raise public awareness, she placed signs on t-posts at the end of her driveway, on ground owned by her cousin (whose land would also be taken by the straightaway): Save a Life! Save a Farm! No Straightaway Here! (The straightaway would run for about half a mile along a hill to the west of the signs.)

“Farms have been disappearing for decades, and it’s partly because people are hesitant to speak up until it’s too late,” she notes. “I’m not afraid to call it out. There’s much more to come after this straightaway and everyone knows it.”

Translated: Pavement births power lines, lighting, bike paths, and houses.

“I know what the county wants and they’re not getting it,” Dannehold emphasizes. “I am my father’s daughter. And my mother’s.”

A Jar of Jelly
Beware of bureaucrats wearing wide grins and bearing jars of jelly, Dannehold says.

In 2006, a subdivision went in behind Mom’s Farm on Country Club Lane on ground annexed by Waterloo. “A city official came down the road to the house and came into the yard with a jar of jelly and what Mom (Irene) called ‘a piece of paper’ to sign. They wanted an earthmoving contractor to come on her farm and realign part of it next to the subdivision. No check, no discussion of terms and conditions, no negotiation. Just a jar of jelly, and a piece of paper for an elderly woman, on oxygen, to sign.”

“My only goal is to make sure we and our neighbors can farm here, and preserve this ground and habitat, as we have for decades,” Dannehold says.

(Photo by Dannehold Farms)

Irene refused to sign. She kept the jelly.

“Mom passed away in 2010. Dad lived until 2017. But before he died, he told me: ‘You know enough to keep the farm running. You can live there. You be in charge.’ That’s what I’m doing. And I intend to keep doing it.”

“I love our history with our farms designated a Sesquicentennial Farm and a Centennial Farm by the State of Illinois. I love that Dad had faith in me, especially because when we were kids, he didn’t think we knew enough to hold a flashlight for him,” Dannehold laughs.

“And I love the farmers, Gregson Farms, that now work my land and rent the pasture,” she continues. “They farmed for Dad, and now us. A road straightening will put them at risk every day with cars flying down asphalt on a straightaway at the top of a hill. I can’t have them, their children, and now grandchildren, coming to the farm and being at risk. I’m not letting that happen.”

The projected expense of road-straightening is difficult to separate from the overall construction project. Phase I and Phase II will cost about $6.9 million according to the Republic-Times (April 2025). Dannehold scoffs at the number. “They draw lines on maps. What do they really know about what they will run into? They’ve already spent tens of thousands on engineers and preliminary reports and plans. This straightaway will be entirely outside of the city limits, but the City of Waterloo is paying half of the cost? The city has already written the county checks. At first, city officials told residents that wasn’t legal. Suddenly they were doing it anyway. They wrote an agreement—but is the agreement legal? No one will tell me how.”

Lip Service
For over a century, Dannehold Farms has survived depressions, recessions, droughts, illnesses, and calamities of all stripes. “Our farms survived them all, and it’s nothing less than a miracle that this ground is still in our family,” Dannehold explains. “But the county putting a bull’s-eye on our backs now—that’s a trickier problem. And I’m sure the county won’t be happy to hear we are looking into keeping it in agriculture even after we are gone.”

In 2023, Monroe County adopted a resolution: Whereas, the County recognizes the value agriculture contributes to our County and the rural way of life is the backbone of our country. Efforts should be made to accommodate future success of the rural community. . . Let it be resolved, the County of Monroe elected board and County staff will work to support and promote the development of agriculture for the benefit of our County and all its residents.

“The county is acting contrary to its own resolution and proclamations in pursuing this straightaway,” Dannehold posits. “But I wouldn’t expect more than lip service from the county anyway.”

“I’m doing everything in my power to stop a road that will make it too dangerous to farm here, and I think I know the ultimate purpose of the road: development,” Dannehold contends.

(Photo by Dannehold Farms)

“My requests for meetings with the county commissioners have all been ignored. It’s five years of keeping us in limbo. They seem dedicated to one track, never even considering options, including improving the existing road. We offered ground to improve sight lines at one corner. They apparently never thought about outlets from two subdivisions to an existing road behind them. They want a main road—an only road—at the worst possible place,” Dannehold adds. “There are cheaper ways, other ways, in other places. This makes no sense, unless the plan is to push farmers out.”

Dannehold concludes with family precedent. “Before that Waterloo official brought the jelly up the road 20 years ago, my dad had been warned that there would be a visitor from the city. He said, ‘We’ll be ready for them.’ Well, we’ll be ready for them this time, too.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting

Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam

Tap A $50 Billion Potential For $2/Acre

Tue, 12 May 2026 19:31:56 GMT

With a database of more than 1,100 programs, LandOption aims to guide farmers looking to stack federal, state, carbon, conservation, and recreational programs. Added up, CEO Eric Dinger estimates those agricultural and conservation programs are worth between $50-80 billion annually.

The Nebraska-based company is using AI to maximize income for farmers and landowners via its four-step process: Listen, Analyze, Navigate, Deliver. Navigating the programs, continuous updates, and list of eligibility requirements can be daunting.

While most programs require operational changes and multiple-year commiments, LandOption identifies which changes offer the highest financial return across multiple stacked incentives.

The opportunity to enroll the same acres in different programs—referred to as stacking—complicates things further. But using the strategy to enroll in multiple projects at one time is the greatest opportunity to maximize the dollars. Most common, federal programs can be simultaneously used alongside carbon programs.

“Currently, right now, no federal programs are making any carbon claims. So you can avoid additionality issues when it comes to these federal programs being used alongside and stacked with carbon programs,” says Ben Paige, director of operations and customer success at LandOption.

Upfront Cost to Avoid FOMO

For $2/acre, LandOption provides a “game plan” that identifies every available incentive for a specific parcel. On average, every parcel examined shows 70-75 available programs.

“Our database covers geographical eligibility, practice requirements, payment structures, contract terms, and hidden costs,” Paige says. “It helps you visualize being enrolled in multiple programs at once so you can choose the best path.”

The ‘Easy Button’

For a 10% commission—paid only when the program payment is received—LandOption manages the heavy lifting: application submission, deadline tracking, compliance monitoring, and payment verification.

Real-World Case Studies

Case 1: Southwest Minnesota Corn/Soybean Farmer (1,500 acres)

Background: No prior cover crop use, frustrated with complicated programs, tight margins
Results: 84 programs identified at ~$92/acre potential value
Enrolled: 7 stacked programs generating $210,000+ annually
Program layers: Carbon program + federal EQIP cost-share + local cost-share + habitat programs + tax programs + recreational hunting lease

Case 2: Southeast Nebraska Landowner (600 acres)

Background: Absentee landowner, family operates farm via cost-share agreement (60-40 split)
Results: 41 programs identified, enrolled in 4 programs
Annual payments: $21,000
Amplified engagement: Negotiated carbon program participation with tenant farmer through cost-share agreement for seed treatment application, with 60-40 split on carbon payments. Farmer had such a positive experience in the carbon program they enrolled an additional 1,400 acres.

Declutter the Carbon Opportunities

While carbon credit prices have struggled, “insetting” programs—driven by supply chain demands from companies like Cargill and Bunge—are more popular than ever.

“We break down the complexity to answer the core questions: What do I actually have to do, and which one pays the best?” Paige says. He notes that all agricultural carbon programs require landowner notification and consent when tenants enroll acres.

Bridging the Landowner and Operator Gap

Dinger notes operators focus on practice-based changes and operational cost-share (carbon, cover crops). Landowners show more interest in conservation easements, long-term programs, and succession planning, with conversations centered on asset valuation vs. income.

In addition to other adviser groups, Land Option works through Farmers National Company farm managers to leverage existing landowner relationships. The partnership enables efficient data sharing and integration with FNC’s reporting cycles.

Government Seizes Farmer’s Land to Build Airport for Corporate Jets and Business Hangars

Tue, 12 May 2026 11:42:10 GMT

The government is taking Jeff Melin’s Georgia farm. His crime? Preserving 450 acres and pouring blood, sweat, and tears into the property.

“We already gave the government land for eminent domain,” he says. “Now they’re back wanting more. Now they want it all.”

Even in the nightmare realm of eminent domain power grabs, Melin’s case is particularly shocking. His farmland is being obliterated, with roughly 225 acres ripped from the middle of his operation to house an airport: Cows replaced by corporate jets. Barns replaced by hangars.

“And it’s not even for commercial passengers,” he says. “It’s an airport for billionaires to park their jets and big businesses to have hangars.”

“My grandfather, dad, and myself protected this land,” Melin continues. “We survived depressions and disasters, and kept this place together for decades. My dad turned down millions of dollars, over and over, from subdivisions.”

Melin describes a sickening contradiction of farmland preservation. “We sacrificed to keep this wonderful place whole, and now that’s why they want it. How could it be more ironic? If we’d have built on it or trashed it, they’d leave it alone. The better and longer you take care of your land, the more at risk you are to losing it.”

Insult to deepest injury, Melin is getting a per acre pittance for his land, he says. “They force me to sell against my will and then pay a fraction of the value. And I’m not allowed to turn them down. My story will make you question what kind of country you’re living in.”

Heaven No More
Sixty miles south of Atlanta, in Spalding County, Melin stares across gentle hills veined with creeks, rubbing against a mix of pastures and woods: cattle, water, deer plots, dove field, pecan grove, and much more. Despite the beauty, it also contains a withering family legacy.

“Our farm was not for sale at any price because our lives were molded around this land,” says Jeff Melin.

(Photo courtesy of Melin Farms)

Awaiting grinding at the edge of the 70-acre pecan grove, a chain of toppled trees stretches like fallen dominoes, with many of the specimens over a century in age. Concrete poles are already in place as pecans give way to power lines. Soon, grass will give way to a 6,000’ asphalt runway, as part of a 730-acre new airport for Spalding County.

“I’ve got 90 days to get my stuff out of a 40’-by-60’ shop so they can get started,” Melin describes. “It’s an order to vacate. That means 90 days to move 75 years worth of farm equipment. I don’t even know where I’ll put all the tools, welders, compressors, and all the rest. I don’t have another shop built. I’ve got to get rid of at least 65 cows and 30 calves right off the bat.”

“They’ve killed my farm,” he adds. “This will be the end of me. And when I say, ‘they,’ I mean the county, state, and federal government. All three are involved with this airport.”

“All together, they’re taking about 225 acres from the middle of my operation. They’re leaving me land in the back that’s landlocked, that I can’t get to, and then leaving me land on the front of one side that’s going to be landlocked. I never dreamed this is how it’d end. For sure, my grandfather and dad (John Bennett Melin) never dreamed it, either. This was heaven to us.”

In 1951, the Melin clan pulled stakes in Red Wing, Minnesota and moved over 1,200 miles to Griffin, Georgia, hauling cattle the whole way, to start Melin Brothers Polled Herefords.

Melin’s 450-acre farm is split into four parcels. The county is taking a 225-acre strip from the middle.

(Photo courtesy of Melin Farms)

“I love everything this farm represents—heart and soul,” Melin says. “I love it so much that I took a job close to home as a mechanic at Delta Airlines so that I could work the land and help my dad. We grew up with sacrifice. Didn’t matter if it was family vacation or Thanksgiving—somebody had to be here to feed. People in farming know exactly what I’m saying. Our farm was not for sale at any price because our lives were molded around this land.”

“At 57 and approaching retirement age, to have your land and life snatched away feels like a terrible dream, but I know it’s real. It all started with a newspaper article: They didn’t even have the decency to knock on my door.”

Blood and Tears
In 2012, Melin opened a morning newspaper to find himself in the bull’s-eye of eminent domain’s “common good.” The existing Spalding County airport’s runway was deemed too short, and Melin’s farm was listed among four to five potential sites to build a new airport on 730 acres, including 124 hangars for express and corporate jets.

The opening stage of airport-related construction commences as a power line takes out a pecan grove on Melin’s land.

(Photo courtesy of Melin Farms)

According to the Georgia Department of Transportation, a new airport would generate $24 million in economic impact per year for Spalding County.

Melin was stunned. His ground is hilly. “I thought it was impossible. A mistake. Why build an airport in hills? I couldn’t imagine the amount of dirt moving and earthworks and boxing creeks it’d take to build an airport on my land. I mean, it even requires moving power lines and a gas line.”

No matter. Melin’s land is open and near town. Case closed, in the county’s eyes.

“We’re an old mill town. There’s plenty of other spots that are flatter, but they don’t want to deal with the legalities and paperwork. Better to take prime agriculture ground preserved across my dad’s lifetime at a cost of blood and tears. There’s a lot of other dilapidated land around here, but it’s not open and would require diligence and hassle. Better to steal mine. There was no public vote or opportunity to say no. Nothing.”

Melin’s 450-acre farm is split into four parcels. The county is taking a 225-acre strip from the middle. Irony upon irony, Melin already had willfully ceded ground to eminent domain. “Many times in the past, for genuine public good, we got out of the way when roads were widened, because we cared about people’s safety. This is not that. This is greed and power.”

An Honest Dollar
Letters and studies. Environmental. Archeological. Ecological.

“They dragged it out, year after year, and never let you know what was really going on,” Melin contends. “They never listened. They never communicated with us face to face. They didn’t come to my house. They didn’t seek me out. They didn’t come find me and say anything. They sent a few letters and made their announcements.”

“It just doesn’t seem like America when someone shows up and says, ‘We’re taking your land for a set price, and you’ll like it or else,’” says Melin.

(Photo courtesy of Melin Farms)

“It was shoddy. No matter what I said, they’d respond, ‘We just have to keep on doing studies.’ This was a foregone conclusion, but they pretended otherwise. They didn’t even know there were five gas lines under me and were going to put hangars on top of them.”

Money doesn’t replace lifeblood, but Melin assumed he’d receive a “fair price” for his land.

Melin had fair reasoning behind his assumption: According to the county, there was nowhere else to build an airport presented as indispensable and necessary. Arguably, Melin was sitting atop the most vital land in Spalding County.

“Nope. They wouldn’t give me an honest dollar.”

Like It or Else
Every year, Melin poured in money to improve his land and soils. Fertilizer, lime, weed control, and myriad other management costs—even foot patrol with a backpack sprayer to kill thistle. “None of that goes into their valuations. All I can do about value is look around and make reasonable judgements based on how much got paid recently for land recently around me. There was an old cattle farm right down the road that we did business with for years. It was 100 acres, fenced and cross-fenced, and sold for $75,000 an acre to Georgia Power for a substation. The owner got $7.5M.”

According to schedule, construction of the new Spalding County Airport will begin in 2026 and conclude in 2031.

(Photo by Google Maps)

“About 2 miles from me, the county bought a 29-acre school site and paid $14,000 per acre about 22 years ago: $420,000,” he adds.

However, according to Melin, Spalding County offered a fraction of what the school property brought per acre. “I’m getting lowballed with a percentage of what the other properties sold for, but I can’t refuse the offer. Don’t tell me about federal guidelines and fair market value. I have eyes. I can smell corruption and manipulation. Doesn’t mean I can prove it, but it’s right in front of my face.”

“It just doesn’t seem like America when someone shows up and says, ‘We’re taking your land for a set price, and you’ll like it or else.’”

Farmer In the Way
According to schedule, construction of the new Spalding County Airport will begin in 2026 and conclude in 2031. Within proximity of Melin’s farm, a groundbreaking ceremony is imminent.

“The better and longer you take care of your land, the more at risk you are to losing it,” warns Jeff Melin.

(Photo courtesy of Melin Farms)

“The lieutenant governor, state officials, politicians, and county commissioners will all be there, backslapping, grinning, and congratulating each other,” Melin notes. “Not a one of them can look me in the eye. Can you imagine if eminent domain was used to take their land to park a jet? No, you can’t imagine such, because that would never happen to them.”

“But I’m just a farmer in their way. They’re happy to take my land and call it ‘progress and public good.’ Force me to sell, take my land, and fly in the billionaires and big companies.”

Grass and dirt in a forced exchange for concrete and asphalt. A farm legacy erased by county, state, and federal seizure. “They’re taking my farmland so rich men can have hangars for their jets,” Melin concludes. “That sound like the ‘public good’ of eminent domain?”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting

Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam

The Only Thing That Lasts: How Ted Turner’s 2 Million Acres Redefined Land Ownership

Thu, 07 May 2026 17:58:47 GMT

Ted Turner’s rise to the top of the Land Report 100 marked a transformative era of American land ownership. Once the largest private landowner in the U.S., Ted Turner had many titles, business accomplishments and accolades as well.

With his death on May 6, 2026, the discussion of his legacy began. And undoubtedly his impressive 2 million acres is the driving force with a “save everything” philosophy toward land stewardship.

“If you visit any of Ted Turner’s properties, there’s a bumper sticker available that reads, “Save Everything,” says Eric O’Keefe editor of The Land Report. “That was his approach, as far as being a landowner. He was a conservationist, first and foremost.”

Turner built a revolutionary business empire—taking father’s billboard company to building a global media powerhouse, pioneering 24-hour news with CNN and acquiring the MGM film library. His business success fueled his land purchases as he reinvested those profits into large tracts of land across the country, and notably in the western states.

“He was one of the original, in this generation, of corporate magnates who plowed their profits into land, O’Keefe says. He adds Turner was friends with the current No. 1 largest landowner John Malone, who he “gave the land bug to.” And it was Turner’s investments that inspired others including Bill Gates.

Turner’s acquisitions gained momentum in the 1990s, making his the first No. 1 largest landowner when The Land Report started its first ranked list in 2007. In the 2025 Land Report list, Turner was the fourth largest with 2 million acres located in Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia and more.

“He looked around corners in ways that few of us can really comprehend. He was buying the greatest ranches in the American West, and these phenomenal quail plantations decades before anyone else,” he says.

O’Keefe says a hallmark of Turner’s land buying was not only in its accumulation but how he enhanced it with conservation efforts.

“I love that Gone with the Wind quote, and of course, Ted acquired the MGM Library and, owned Gone with the Wind. And the quote is, ‘land, it’s the only thing that lasts.’ And at the end of the day, that was, to him, in my opinion the most powerful element of his legacy.”

Farmland Value Check: Midwest Class A Ground Sees Pullback, Water Security Redefines California’s Market

Mon, 04 May 2026 03:08:14 GMT

New data assembled by Realtors Land Institute (RLI), the National Association of Realtors Research Group and Acres, highlights fundamental trends driving the land market today. But this year’s Land Market Survey, which was augmented by research conducted by Acres, unveils two trends in farmland regarding quality and productivity ratings as well as other trends important in the business management of farmland.

First, Overall Land Trends

In addressing widespread concerns about a potential U.S. recession, Dr. Lawrence Yun Chief Economist and SVP of Research, National Association of Realtors emphasized that, despite recent oil price shocks and persistently low consumer sentiment, the U.S. economy is not on the brink of recession.

The survey details multiple industries and sectors in land use and values, and for 2025, In terms of price growth, the ranch category led with a 2.2% increase in dollars per acre, outperforming other land types. Industrial and recreational land also saw solid gains of 1.9% each, while other categories experienced moderate increases. Notably, Commercial Real Estate Data Analyst, Oleh Sorokin anticipates that while land sales will strengthen in 2026, the pace of price growth is expected to slow, with projected increases in the ranch category dropping to 0.9% per acre.

How Are Farmland Values Performing Differently?

The presenters highlight the energy price correlation as Farmland values and operational balance sheets are heavily tied to energy prices, as oil and gas drive both fuel costs and fertilizer prices.

“Tariffs are one that it’s kind of dwarfed now by the energy situation, but tariffs were a pretty big impact last year,” says Aaron Shew, chief technology officer at Acres.

With fuel input prices and fertilizer input prices highly driven by energy prices, those effects are being monitored closely both in terms of price hikes but also duration of elevated prices.

He continues, “Some of the energy challenges that we’re undergoing with the war in Iran and the blockade, Straits of Hormuz, I think that has the potential, maybe less in the broader real estate market, but for farmland specifically, that could have a pretty large impact, depending on how it resolves, how quickly that happens.”

What Are The High Interest Trends?

Shew’s research reveals two eye-catching farmland value takeaways.

1. Midwest Market “Pullback": Class A farmland in the Midwest is seeing a “mature” pullback of about 10% from the 2021–2022 peaks, while Class B ground remains slightly more resilient.

(Acres.com)

First Shew notes, 2021 and 2022 saw 1.5x to 2x the average number of land transactions. The highest value per acres sales during that time earned a lot of attention. What he refers to as “hype.”

“Particularly in Iowa and Illinois, where farmers were buying farms for $25,000 or $30,000 per acre. you have these outlier transactions. It’s very, very few, but they catch a lot of attention and that kind of pushes some land values up.”

He says that raised expectations that Class A—or the highest rated productivity ground—had reached a new plateau in values and wouldn’t go down.

But Shew notes, as of 2025, there’s been a 10% pullback from those ’21 and ’22 peaks. And that’s on the highest rated ground in terms of productivity.

Class B ground values have been more resilient.

2. In California, Water is Half Your Land’s Value

Looking at the data, Shew says in California, water security drives the value, particularly for permanent crops. Tier 1 districts with multiple water sources maintain high values, while “white space” (areas without district water) is seeing significant distress and land fallowing.

“A lot of people are already talking about water regulations, how water security plays a role, and, permanent crops have been under duress for close to three years now,” Shew says. “So that’s not new, but we’ve quantified the impacts regionally, and across ag districts, and by permanent crop type.”

The crops showing this trend in spades: almonds and pistachios.

“For Tier 1 districts, for almonds, you’re looking at $30,000 plus an acre. And then you go to Tier 2 districts, and you’ll see it around a little over $20,000 an acre. Outside of districts, it’s called white space and you’re actually at $13,000 per acre, which is almond ground being sold as bare ground—rip and replace.”

(Acres.com)

He says Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) will mean that 500,000 to 750,000 acres of irrigated farmland will have to be fallowed or pulled out by 2040.

“So that’s about 10% of the farmland in California’s Central Valley, most of it in San Joaquin,” so we’re seeing some initial phases of that as we’ve seen tens of thousands of permanent crops come out in the past few years,” Shew says.

He adds, “Water regulatory bodies have put more pressure on farming in California. It’s just going to create a harsher environment for how water gets distributed and allocated.”

Resilience via Government Assistance

Programs such as the Farmers Bridge Assistance are preventing forced land sales by supporting farm operations, which keeps land values stable despite two years of challenging economics. He says we are reaching the tipping point in year three.

“Farm operations can be poor for a year or two and you’re not really going to see it show up in land values,” he says. “But we’re on a third year of this, and we’ve got other challenges that are fairly unprecedent at the same time, so there’s a lot to watch.”

“If you have to declare bankruptcy on your farm, 80% of most farm balance sheets is land, so that’s the large asset that’s going to get sold by the bank,” Shew says. “Government policies to provide support, The Farmers Bridge Assistance is the most recent one that probably plays the largest role, and it just helps farmers get to the end of ‘26, where hopefully balance sheets are in a good place.”

He’s also watching how the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill come to bear this fall and at year end.

“Reference prices for, rice, in particular, is one that comes to mind. Those will take place and hopefully create some stability, but you have got to get to the end of the year.”

Transaction Volume Stabilization

Nationwide transaction volumes have returned to pre-pandemic (2018–2020) levels, though California is seeing an uptick in volume due to “distress sales” from owners who can no longer float the costs.

“The low interest rates ‘21 to 23, roughly created a great time for folks to invest in land. They wanted to deploy capital, and land is the definition of a real asset,” he says. “You had that boom, and then, of course, as rates went up in ’23 and ’24 and values stabilized at much higher levels, it turned off that capital allocation.”

(Acres.com)

National farmland transaction volumes in 2024 and 2025—transaction count, acreage turnover, and overall volume of dollars—is approximately the same as 2018 and 2020.

“Q4 of ‘21 and Q1 of ‘22, we saw three times the typical amount that would turn over,” he says. “So in Q4 of 2021, we saw 10 billion in farmland in one quarter—high volume and high values.”

While 2021 was the big, from a year-over-year standpoint, that began to fall back, by 20%, then 30%. He says the flattening from 2024 to 2025 is a bright spot to show overall stability.

“We’re not going to continue to see less transactions or lower sales volumes. We’re seeing that stabilize at a more consistent level alongside where interest rates are,” he says. “And presumably, if we see interest rates decrease, we will see that pick back up, and start what may be another cycle.”

You can download the full Market Values Report here.

No Consent: Tennessee Farmer Defeats TVA Energy Giant in Property Rights Battle

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:47:31 GMT

Come hell or high water, utility companies rule farmland. Power lines talk and farmers walk.

“Not this time,” says John Gregory. “We’re not selling and we’re not giving way.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) intended to carve a pole-and-wire corridor through Gregory’s 650 acres—a 239-year-old historic family farm founded at the close of the American Revolution.

“They thought they could run over us, but this is the age of digital and social media,” he says. “They didn’t expect for the public to find out what they were doing and they didn’t expect farmers to have a voice.”

Cheapest and Fastest
Thirty miles northeast of Nashville, John and Kaytlin Gregory, alongside John’s father, Robert “Frosty” Gregory, background steers, and grow corn and soybeans, outside Gallatin, in Sumner County, Tennessee. In addition to direct-to-consumer beef, pork, and chicken, Kaytlin runs a booming farm school and homeschool program, bringing in elementary kids from the Nashville metro to learn the basics of row crops, livestock, pollination, wildlife, weather, and nature. She barely keeps up with demand: First started in 2023 with 30 kids, the hands-on sessions now draw 300-plus participants.

“Families who preserve their property are the ones who get penalized because eventually the utility companies or the government can take advantage of what you saved,” says John Gregory.

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

“For some of these kids, it’s the only exposure they get to agriculture and the outdoors during their entire childhoods,” Kaytlin explains.

“That’s what has always been done on this farm ,” John adds. “Find a way to meet a need and provide for our community. We’ve done it for almost 240 years.”

Sincerely. In 1787, Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Wallace, of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, earned 640 acres for his militia service. Family in tow, he crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains and settled in Sumner County. Nine generations of full-time farmers later, his direct descendants still work the land.

“That’s who we are,” John says. “But our survival was put under threat from a power line.”

A TVA line was set to cross the Gregory’s farm pastures and woods with a 100’ right-of-way, balding the ground and essentially erasing farm school.

“It would destroy what we do and what we’ve worked so hard to build,” Kaytlin says. “TVA proposed 10 posts with guidelines across the farm. All vegetation and trees removed in the corridor, and that means they’d take out the exact trail and creek crossing and education area we use for farm school.”

“It was all so unnecessary,” John says. “This is not about the inconvenience of farming around a light pole. This is about tearing up the entire way our farm works. They can easily go another way, and everyone knows it. This is not the way to treat people.”

“TVA assumed we would all do exactly as we were told,” says Kaytlin Gregory. “It works for them everywhere else, but not this time.”

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

“Families who preserve their property are the ones who get penalized because eventually the utility companies or the government can take advantage of what you saved,” he adds. “They see a wide-open parcel on a map and roll in because it’s the cheapest and fastest route.”

Significantly, TVA promotes itself as a model of “environmental stewardship,” a claim John dismisses. “TVA wanted to plow through our 239-year-old farm to run power to a mega-development with over 1,000 houses stacked on top of each other and destroy the land we use to teach kids about the outdoors, animals, and agriculture. That is TVA’s idea of environmentalism?”

Making Noise
The proposed power line first poked the Gregory property in spring of 2024 via a snail-mail letter from TVA. Paraphrased: A power line is coming via multiple potential routes, and your land may or may not be in one of those routes.

“They had a public forum in May to come by and voice your opinion,” John notes. “They also had it open online to make comments. That was it. After the forum, everything went silent. I didn’t think any more about it.”

“Your farm or private land will be next, so don’t be afraid to speak out and expose what these companies do,” says John concludes. “You’re no longer a voice in the wind.”

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

Three months later, on August 25, a TVA surveyor pulled up to the Gregory farm shop, according to John, and stated, “I’m here to survey where the power lines are coming across and I need permission.”

The surveyor showed John where the lines would run across the farm: “I could see right away it would ruin everything me and Kaitlyn had worked on, plus the rest of the farm. Seemed like this just couldn’t be happening.”

The chain of process was in motion. Survey. Historical study. Ecological study. In mid-January 2025, TVA workers placed stubs precisely where permanent poles would be stationed.

“By this point, there was yet to be a TVA representative set foot on the farm or even a letter in the mail talking about buying the easement or purchasing the easement,” John recounts. “Every time they came to do something, my dad asked to speak to somebody in charge and he’d get the same answer, ‘That’s further up the token pole. I’m just here to do a job.’”

Frosty’s patience was gone. He demanded a TVA official high in the brass. “Finally, a TVA engineer called my dad, and he told the guy about our farm school and what a power line would do to our farm school.”

“TVA knew the power line would put an end to our agriculture education programs,” says Kaytlin. “They knew farm school was a crucial part of our farm.”

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

The engineer, according to John, insinuated that farm school was a “made-up” cover, and insisted on proof of its existence.

Kaytlin responded with online links, signup information, and social media videos as proof of the farm school’s wide outreach and success. “TVA knew the power line would put an end to our agriculture education programs,” she contends. “They knew farm school was a crucial part of our farm. They knew our farm was in continuous operation since the Revolutionary War. They just didn’t care.”

“My dad reached out to the TVA guys again and again,” John explains. “That’s when they shut the door and said, “No. There’s nothing we can do.”

John, Katylin, and Frosty were supposed to roll. “No way,” John adds. “That’s when we started to make noise.”

All Hands on Deck
Initially, the Gregorys put crosshairs on a single goal: Get one particularly imposing pole removed and pray that farm school could still function.

The Gregory family alongside country music artist John Rich, second from right, a major proponent of private property rights.

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

“Didn’t work,” John says. “They wouldn’t talk to us about it. Not even a single pole off the table.”

All hands on deck. John and Kaytlin began making calls, pleading for help: TVA reps, engineers, state legislators, congressmen, media. Anyone. Everyone.

They cranked out a petition and spoke out in social media videos, hoping to gain attention.

And then some. They caught the eyes and ears of a heavyweight country music star and songwriter. Enter an irate John Rich, a major league advocate of property rights, who ran their story up the viral flagpole : The Gregory Family does NOT CONSENT to the @TVAnews running transmission lines across their 239 year old, Revolutionary War Era farm. Thank you @jeremymansfield for ringing the bell! I call on @SecRollins and @USDA to look into this ASAP.

(In 2025, Rich led successful grassroots opposition to a proposed TVA power plant in Cheatham County , Tennessee. In February 2026, he was appointed as a citizen advocate by USDA to help roll out the Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework , aimed at countering ag lawfare.)

“Well, wouldn’t you know?” John recalls. “Almost instantly, TVA called telling my dad that they’d move that single pole anywhere on the farm so they could come across.”

Frosty responded with a line in the sand: I’m not agreeing to that. No consent. We don’t want this power line.

The Gregorys had found their voice.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears
“Publicly, TVA pretended our opposition was the first they’d heard about any of this,” Kaytlin explains.

Significantly, TVA released statements claiming ignorance regarding Gregory family resistance to the power line: “TVA has been working directly with Mr. Robert Gregory, the landowner, for several months and this concern had not previously been raised.”

Gregory Family Farm has been in operation since 1787.

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

“Not true,” Kaytlin counters. “We’ve got texts to prove otherwise. Frosty was against the line from the start, but they wouldn’t listen or let him talk to anyone up high. They never came around to have conversations with surrounding landowners. It’s very clear: TVA assumed we would all do exactly as we were told. It works for them everywhere else, but not this time. This was never about anything except protecting our farm.”

Money played no role, she explains. As in, there was no holdout or hope for a big payout. “Money. Money. Money. That’s comical,” she exclaims. “We’ve broken our backs with blood, sweat, and tears to keep this farm going. That’s what we care about and that’s why its lasted for 240 years. We’re not selling, period.”

“My dad’s been approached close to 10 times in the last 15 years to sell this whole place,” John echoes. “The plans went from industrial stations to housing developments. Every time, the people making those offers left with hat in hand. We’ve been here too long to sell. Some people see the dollars and don’t understand what I’m saying. Those people never will understand.”

In March 2026, with public discontent at full-bore, TVA ended the power line cut across Gregory Family Farm, choosing a different route.

A TVA spokesman told Agweb.com: “There was significant objection to a TVA-proposed route impacting the more than 200-year-old farm owned by the Gregory family. TVA has agreed not to pursue that route … TVA is exploring other options for the transmission line route, which would more closely follow existing rights of way.”

Additionally, TVA contends a newly-formed “Landowner Task Force,” including several farmers, will offer future input on energy projects.

Backbones of steel. John and Kaytlin Gregory.

(Photo by Gregory Family Farm)

The Gregorys are hopeful regarding TVA’s change of direction, but wary. Without the “noise” made by Kaitlyn and John, there would be TVA poles and wires across Gregory Family Farm . Instead, the Revolutionary War-era farm is in full operation, and farm school is in session.

“Your farm or private land will be next, so don’t be afraid to speak out and expose what these companies do,” John concludes. “You’re no longer a voice in the wind.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing