Surrounded by rows of soybeans and corn, Hans Bishop’s farm in central Illinois was an anomaly. He grew kale, peppers, eggplants and radishes, selling to Whole Foods from June through October and to local restaurants, grocers and families year-round.
The vegetable farm was born in 2009 on a quarter acre rented to him by his father, a row crop farmer. After spending a decade in the corporate world, Bishop was inspired by documentaries such as “Fresh” and “Food, Inc.” that scrutinized conventional farming. He returned to the fields with aspirations to farm differently.
The fresh produce Bishop grew landed directly on chopping boards and dinner plates. It wasn’t being funneled into gasoline tanks, ultra-processed foods or livestock feed troughs — the most common destinations for Illinois’ leading agricultural products, soybeans and corn.
In less than a decade, his operation in Logan County had expanded to 80 acres. It was becoming what progressive food movements celebrate as “sustainable.”
But he couldn’t keep it going. Bishop and his wife Katie spent countless hours on marketing, had to rely on hired labor and couldn’t access the federally subsidized safety nets available to commodity farmers.
Reporting for this story was supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship.
Bishop, now 41, phased out his flourishing vegetable enterprise after his father abruptly retired in 2019, leaving him to take over the family bean and grain operation. Part of the land — 120 of the nearly 700 acres — is rented from a family who owns multiple farm properties and wants their fields weed-free with perfectly straight grids of crops, a deep-rooted tradition among Midwestern farming communities.
“They want that land to be clean corn and soybeans,” Bishop said. Before the restrictions, his father was growing organic corn and soybeans on part of the field and letting Bishop grow vegetables on the rest.
Now, to keep the fields to the owner’s standards, Bishop has had to forgo vegetables and use pesticides and fertilizers, which can pollute nearby water sources and degrade soil health over time.
Less than a fourth of Illinois farmland is owned by the farmer who works the land, according to data from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management, a nonprofit association that helps farmers make management decisions. The rest is leased to farmers by individuals, family trusts and, increasingly, businesses.
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