On a nice day, there's nowhere Jeff Fisher would rather be than surrounded by his herd of feeder cows.
"A happy cow makes me happy," he says.
Fisher calls himself the head cow.
"I'm trying to get unattached to 2806 back there," he says. "She's the big lead cow and she really needs to go because she's 14 years old."
Getting rid of these cows isn't something that's easy for Fisher. Even when things got really bad the last few years and he was losing money on each head of cattle, Fisher didn't want to get out of the cow business.
But Fisher needed to find a way to reduce his costs since he wasn't making money. The 120 acres the cows graze on is his biggest expense.
Another Option For Farmers
That's where federally funded agriculture programs comes in.
About half of the land mass in Indiana is farmed for either corn or soybeans. But that amount is decreasing.
"With the pressures of development and the choices that landowners have to make based on agriculture prices, some pretty tough choices are being made," Hardisty says.
According to the USDA, 50,000 acres of Indiana farmland was lost between 2007 and 2010.
The Farm Bill that went into effect this week aims to slow that trend by allocating millions of dollars to restore farmland, wetlands and grasslands.
Under the programs, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers who voluntarily agree to limit development on their land can receive money for doing do.
Fisher, for example, who didn't want to develop his property or farm it, was eligible for the Grassland Reserve Program.
He cut his mortgage payment in half, and that allowed him to continue his cow calf operation.
"It's allowed me to keep the cows but with instead of the total investment of land. They've given me a payment that has cut my loan value in half which really makes my return on investment bigger because it cuts down on investment," he says.
The government paid Fisher the difference between what the land was appraised at before the easement and what it was appraised at after.
Fisher gets to keep the land and maintains the ability to graze his cows on it and grow hay on half of it. In return, the government gets all the development rights and cropping rights.
So, in perpetuity, the 85 acres Fisher put into the preserve has to stay in pasture and hay.
"There may be a time I regret it, but it's really working for me now," he says. "If I don't regret it, someone down the road is going to say, 'Well, that land ain't worth half as much cause you can't crop it.'"
'Clearly A Need For Planning'
One of the main reasons for the loss of farmland is urban development.
Each year Indiana loses about 1 percent of farmland to urbanization, which, while it doesn't sound like much, adds up over an extended period of time.
"Over time there's clearly a need for planning," Purdue agricultural economist Chris Hurt says it says. "[There's] clearly a need for concern about our agricultural land base that is in food production."
"[There's] clearly a need for concern about our agricultural land base that is in food production."
– Chris Hurt
Hurt, though, questions whether the best way to do that is to pay farmers directly instead of working more closely with city planners, for example, to prevent urban sprawl.
Critics of the perpetual easements also argue that a piece of land should be evaluated to ensure it is worth preserving prior to making a long-term investment because money is limited.
Indiana got $3.4 million last year to distribute for agricultural and wetland easement, which helped restore 52,000 acres of wetlands and 32,000 acres of prime farmland.
The state received a new allocation of money Oct. 1.
As for Fisher and his cows, it has been six years since he his easement, and he says he still feels good about it.
"Eventually I might have gotten around to the point of well, I've had enough of cows, I'll cash rent this out," he says. "But probably not. I do like fooling with the cows especially in the summertime, winter is a little different."
