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Immigration reshaping the next generation of farmers

Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media

Bear Creek Dairy in Brooklyn, Iowa, is home to more than 1,100 cows, who provide about 100,000 pounds of milk each day. The 15-year-old farmer who works closely with the farm’s calves comes from a long line of dairymen – in Europe.

Five years ago, Teun Boelen’s parents sold their farm in the Netherlands and bought a dairy in southeast Iowa because, as his mother explains it, there was no room for their old farm to grow.  

“We could sell our land to the city,” said Dorine Boelen. And that made sense for them, “because there were no possibilities for us to stay there longer than 20 years, we calculated.”

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
In Brooklyn, Iowa, the Boelen family bought a dairy farm where there was room to expand—something that wasn’t possible on their family farm in The Netherlands.

By moving to Iowa, she says her five children have the option of a future in farming. Teun and one of his older brothers hope to eventually to farm full-time, alongside their parents.

Immigration is helping to re-shape what agriculture looks like in the Midwest. Farming is already more ethnically diverse than it was even a decade ago and immigrants of all stripes are working the land.

The Boelen family came to this country through an immigration program that allows for visas for an entire family when the new arrivals invest significant dollars and create jobs.

But to be sure, this immigrant experience is unique. Latin Americans make up the majority of immigrants coming to the Midwest today and most of them work at whatever jobs they can. Often, the jobs involve hard manual labor or unappealing work in meat processing plants. Their kids, who come of age in this country, often turn away from agriculture.

Pacifique Simon, born in Congo to Burundian parents, experienced yet another path.  After fleeing war and living for many years in refugee camps, six years ago he and his family received asylum in the United States. They landed in Des Moines with plenty of life experience, but not a lot of cash.

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
Mariselina Simon and her son Pacifique work together at a farmers market in Des Moines where most of the vendors are, like them, refugees.

Back in Burundi, the family farmed. Now, thanks to a plot of land furnished by a partnership between Lutheran Services in Iowa and Valley Free Church in West Des Moines, they once again can get their hands in the dirt. They’re even selling some vegetables at a farmers market—alongside other refugee-vendors.

“We are so happy about it because we got to produce lot of stuff this year,” Simon said. “And then we are making good money, too, that’s a good thing, to get like another income.”

Simon, who’s 22, enjoys helping in the field, where his family grows potatoes, beets, squash, sweet corn and a spinach-like vegetable they call lenga-lenga, which is better known in Iowa as a weed called amaranth.

Simon can see that his family’s donated plot will never support him, so he’s majoring in agricultural systems technology at Iowa State University. He says classmates from farm families have an easier time becoming farmers. But he has set his sights on an agriculture career that includes Africa.

“I want to learn some skill here and then go teach people back there so they can produce enough food to feed their own family,” Simon said.

He has never been to Burundi, but he says he’s confident the country will be stable enough for him to work there someday.

As the ethnic makeup of the Midwest continues to shift, Teun Boelen and his family harken to a past era of Europeans as the dominant newcomers to this region. But Pacifique Simon and other African, Asian and, especially, Latin American immigrants will contribute more to the future of farming in the Heartland. 

Credit Amy Mayer/Harvest Public Media
Map showing the number of immigrant farm operators by county (purple and red have the highest numbers). See the links below for an interactive map showing the immigrant population and ethnic breakdown of farm operators by county across the Midwest.

How many immigrants are farming in the U.S?

Complete numbers are hard to come by but the number of Hispanic farm operators nationwide increased 21 percent from 2007-2012, according to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture.  To see the patterns across the Midwest, click a county on this map to see its immigrant population and an ethnic breakdown of its farm operators or view the underlying data set.

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This story was reported with assistance from the Institute for Justice & Journalism’s “Immigration in the Heartland” fellowship.

Amy Mayer is a reporter based in Ames. She covers agriculture and is part of the Harvest Public Media collaboration. Amy worked as an independent producer for many years and also previously had stints as weekend news host and reporter at WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts and as a reporter and host/producer of a weekly call-in health show at KUAC in Fairbanks, Alaska. Amy’s work has earned awards from SPJ, the Alaska Press Club and the Massachusetts/Rhode Island AP. Her stories have aired on NPR news programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition and on Only A Game, Marketplace and Living on Earth. She produced the 2011 documentary Peace Corps Voices, which aired in over 160 communities across the country and has written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Real Simple and other print outlets. Amy served on the board of directors of the Association of Independents in Radio from 2008-2015.