Today's Ag: Multi-Generational Farming with Zoe Kent

Welcome back to Today's Ag. I'm your host, Howard Halderman, and on this episode we're talking about something that sits at the heart of farming in this country, keeping land and a way of life in the family for generation after generation.

My guest is Zoe Kent, an eighth generation corn and soybean producer in Ohio and the voice behind the YouTube channel FarmwithZoe, where she shares an honest look at day to day life on a farm that's been in her family for over two hundred years. Zoe brings a perspective that a lot of us in this business talk about but few actually live, what it takes to carry a farm forward from one generation to the next.

We'll dig into succession planning and transition planning from her point of view, the conversations that have to happen around the kitchen table, the decisions that get put off too long, and what it actually looks like to hand a farm off successfully instead of watching it get sold or split apart.

If you're a landowner thinking about the future of your farm, or a farm family trying to figure out how to talk about it, this episode is for you.

Farmland values keep climbing, and for many operators the hardest part of expansion isn't finding the ground, it's finding the money to buy it. In this episode, host Howard Halderman sits down with Ben Gordon, CEO of Fractal Ag, a farmland investment platform built to help farmers access capital without giving up control of their land.

Ben Gordon is the co-founder and CEO of Fractal Ag, a farmland investment platform that brings investors alongside farmers to help fund farm businesses and drive returns. Rather than competing with farmers to buy land, the company invests alongside farmers by taking a passive stake in their current farmland, with farmers receiving needed capital while maintaining full control of their land.

Howard and Ben dig into what's driving today's land values, how equity partnerships differ from traditional debt, and what growers should be doing now to line up capital before the right farm hits the market. If you've ever penciled out what you'd do if the farm across the road came up for sale, this conversation is for you.

Welcome to Today's Ag. I'm Howard Halderman. Most people in this business talk about preserving agricultural heritage. Today's guest lives inside it. Larry Smith is a Halderman area representative in northeast Indiana — and when he goes home at night, he pulls up to a brick farmhouse that has been standing since 1860. Three owners in 165 years. Four Belgian draft horses. And harness hooks still on the wall right where they were put. Today Larry and I talk about what that kind of continuity means, and how it shapes the way he serves landowners every day.