NW Minnesota farmer stays grounded with plans to help a new generation of growers
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. MPR News sent longtime reporter Dan Gunderson on a mission to capture those stories as part of a series called “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
This spring has been a new experience for Tim Dufault. He isn't repairing machinery or waiting anxiously to plant crops on his farm in northwestern Minnesota. Standing in his front yard listening to a chorus of bird calls, though, he still gets the itch.
"In the spring, you hear those red-winged blackbirds singing, and it just smells a little warmer,” he said. “Oh, man, your blood gets going again.”
A fourth-generation farmer whose great-grandfather bought the family’s first tract of land from the railroad in 1885, Dufault faced a question as he readied to retire: Who should work the land? His three children had fulfilling careers outside farming and weren’t interested in taking over.
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Rather than cash out to a corporate interest, he cut a different path. This spring, Dufault, 65, is giving six young farmers access to his land in Gentilly Township. He hopes to cultivate a new generation of farmers who’ll stay rooted in his community.
"The last thing I want to do is to rent to somebody that doesn't shop local,” he said. “And these guys are all going to be local. They're going to raise their kids in the school districts. They'll be on the school boards, or the church boards."
He picked young men he felt were good farmers who were trying to expand. "I wanted to keep it to guys that are just starting.”
‘He could have named his price’
Access to land is one of the biggest challenges for young farmers. The average age of Minnesota farmers is 57, so the transition to a younger generation is accelerating.
Dufault decided to rent his crop land to young farmers, rather than one large operator that might be willing to pay a bit more per acre to farm the land.
It is getting “harder and harder every year” to find land to rent, said Alex Prudhomme, one of the six young farmers renting a piece of the Dufault farm, which runs about 1,100 acres total.
“Tim could have named his price, and I know people were knocking at his door,” said Prudhomme, 32, who’s been farming for about 12 years.
“For a guy like that to do what he did, spread it out amongst a few young farmers, you can't even put it into words how much that means to some of the smaller guys who have a seriously uphill battle to climb.”
Prudhomme hopes to buy his first farmland this year, but there are challenges with rising prices and competition from large farmers and investors who see farmland as a profitable holding for the future.
‘Life beyond farming’
Dufault and his wife Marlene will still live on the farm. They enjoy the bucolic setting and he enjoys caring for the spacious yard.
The stress of farming is what led him to retire while he's still healthy and on solid financial ground, but he's still going to miss the routine. He’s familiar with every square foot of the land after a lifetime of planting and harvesting wheat, corn and soybeans.
"You can't beat being in a tractor going up and down the field,” He said. “It's just something about putting a seed in the ground and watching it grow and harvesting it, there's just such fulfillment with that.”
On the other hand, he won’t miss the combine breaking down in the middle of harvest, the markets crashing when he’s trying to sell grain, or a hailstorm that wipes out a beautiful crop.
“Those are the days you wish you were doing something else," he said.
Dufault still has work to do preparing for a July auction to sell off most of his machinery but he’s planning to buy golf clubs, and he recently tried his hand at pickleball. “I might have to get in the pickup and go to town," he said with a chuckle.
He also went to hear an author speak in the middle of the day, an unthinkable use of time in the past 44 spring seasons. “There's life beyond farming," he said, although he admits with a smile that he’ll still be watching the crops grow.
And wishing a good harvest for his young renters.
“I remember when I was at their point in my career, it's like you were just hungry to get a piece of ground. So they've got that optimism, that drive, and I know those guys are going to be successful.”
