This is the first of a three-part series for The Colorado Dream: Growing a Future. The stories in this series are part of the KUNC podcast The Colorado Dream, airing on Mondays beginning September 29. The podcast is available for download wherever you may listen to podcasts and on KUNC.org.
In a huge workshed near Wray, Colo., Rod Lenz sat atop a nearly seven-foot-tall, cherry-red Farmall M tractor with a beet digger.
“I'll see if it starts,” Lenz said as he turned on the ignition switch. The machine roared to life.
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Lenz bought the tractor and then rebuilt the digger with his dad in 2009 using a patchwork of parts. The 70 year old sees the machine as an homage to his farming roots.
Lenz’s first memory of farming was when he was in kindergarten and his dad, George Lenz Sr., worked on farms around Weld County. It was beet season, and one afternoon his dad planned to install a one-row digger on his M tractor. Lenz could not wait to lend a hand.
“I got out of school, I ran home probably 15 blocks – we just lived right on the edge of town – and I was out there helping my dad put on that beat digger,” he said.
Now, over six decades later, Lenz lives on his family’s farmland on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. This beet digger is a reminder of his love for farming, family and a rural way of life. A life that almost didn’t happen.
Family farms have been disappearing across the country for decades. From extreme weather to fluctuating crop prices to trade policies, building a business off the land is hard. But row by row and harvest after harvest, the Lenz family is bucking that trend. This is their story.
Born to Farm
From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, George Lenz Sr. and his wife Betty Lenz lived in Gilcrest, a small town in Weld County, where they raised eight children, five boys and three girls. George worked as a hired man and tenant farmer in Weld County, but both he and Betty dreamed of owning their own farm. They’d heard deep wells were springing up across Colorado’s Eastern Plains, allowing farmers to irrigate their crops and raise livestock.
In the spring of 1973, they purchased land in Yuma County. Lenz had just graduated from high school, and he remembers their first drive out here.
“It was only three hours, but that seemed like forever at that time,” he said. “(We) went to the worst piece of ground I could ever find. And (Dad) said, ‘Yep, this is ours. I thought, ‘What are you gonna do with that?’”
Lenz’s oldest brother moved here first and started planting corn. The next year, much of the family joined him. By 1976, Lenz had a decision to make. Stay at Colorado State University with his high school sweetheart or drop out and join the new family business.
“My dad says, ‘I'm forming a farm. Gonna call it Lenz Farms, you in or out?’ That was an easy decision. You know, marry my girl and let’s go home and farm. I don't need no degree,” he said. “I was born to be a farmer.”
Lenz Farms was officially in business.
Deep Roots
Agriculture generates about $47 billion a year for Colorado, and the state’s northeastern counties have a big hand in that. It takes a massive amount of water to grow crops and raise livestock here. The land has always been dry.
“Ever since settlers have been arriving in Colorado – the land that we now call Colorado – to set up communities and establish ways of life, they have been struggling against the scarcity, the aridity of the environment that's natural here,” said Patty Rettig, the archivist for the Water Resources archive at Colorado State University’s Morgan Library.
Government incentives encouraged people to move to the Eastern Plains, Rettig said. At first, they farmed using rainfall and groundwater from hand dug wells.
“But of course, they could tell that if there was more water that they could use, they could grow more crops and make more money as farmers,” she said.
By the early 1900s, the technology to dig deep wells and pump groundwater really began to develop. Around mid-century, a Nebraska farmer named Frank Zybach invented center-pivot irrigation. It’s a sprinkler system with a long pipe, supported by mobile towers, that rotates around in a circle. Those circular patches of land, also called pivots, are what can be seen from a plane window.
“Overall, it was a labor saving device that could really get this water out of the ground, put it on the fields,” she said. “(It) really revolutionized the amount that could be grown, how it could be grown.”
In Colorado and throughout the Great Plains, center-pivot irrigation systems pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer. The aquifer is a giant underground basin of freshwater that, on average, sits about 100 to 300 feet below the surface. It’s millions of years old and extends beneath Colorado and eight other states from South Dakota to Texas.
The aquifer is a big deal. It supports nearly 30% of America’s irrigated crop operations along with significant cattle, dairy and hog production.
“Over the course of time, through a variety of farm policy decisions we've made, the focus has been on creating farming operations and ranching operations that can be highly efficient and highly productive,” said Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, who served as the secretary of agriculture under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Vilsack is teaching a course at CSU this fall on how to help small farms survive and thrive.
In the early 1970s, the United States had an agricultural boom and signed a multi-year grain deal with the Soviet Union. This demand nearly tripled the price of wheat and the cost of corn, soybean and livestock went up too. Land values increased and banks lent more money.
“Our government made a specific set of decisions that essentially encouraged farmers to, as they used to say, plant fence row to fence row, really focus on productivity,” he said. “Since we adopted that policy, some concerns were expressed about the impact it would have.”
A big concern was that more production meant farming operations needed to get bigger. To get bigger, they needed more money, resources, land and equipment, and many small farms wouldn’t be able to keep up.
Then the 1980s Farm Crisis hit. The U.S. imposed a grain embargo against the Soviet Union. Interest rates skyrocketed while crop prices and land values dropped, leading to widespread farm foreclosures and a massive recession. Since the early 1980s, around 600,000 farms have disappeared.
“It would take all the farmers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri to equal the number of farmers and farm operations that we've lost,” Vilsack said.
As these farms vanish, the U.S. has lost over 150 million acres of farmland. But that hasn’t stopped the country from being one of the top ag producers in the world.
Family Operation
What happened in the 1970s and 1980s touched every corner of America, including Colorado’s Eastern Plains, where Lenz, his dad and brothers were just starting out.
So how did Lenz Farms survive? It almost didn’t. By 1982, Lenz got to the point where he was tired of working with his brothers, he said, and told his wife they should farm on their own the next year.
However, that July, Mother Nature stepped in.
“Well, lo and behold, we had the worst cotton picking hailstorm you could ever imagine that very year, 1982 and there's nothing left,” he said. “I mean, nothing left.”
Around 1,500 acres of corn were wiped out. Lenz could no longer go out on his own. The bank wouldn’t lend him money. But the family got financing for another year. According to Lenz, the ‘82 hailstorm probably saved the farm.
The Lenzes decided to utilize each other's strengths and split up the tasks of the operation. One brother excelled in agronomy and fertilizers. Another was the numbers guy. The third took over the cattle. Lenz ran the potato enterprises.
The family was able to weather the 1980’s Farm Crisis and subsequent challenges that led hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized farms to shut down over the decades.
“We still had accountability. We worked together, but we appreciated each other's talents. And it doesn't mean we all got along perfectly all the time, but it made all the difference in the world,” he said.
Lenz Farms has grown tremendously over the past five decades, with gross sales over a million dollars. They employ 13 full time workers and around 27 seasonal ones. The farm produces several crops, runs cattle and operates a feedlot and packing shed.
Lenz products end up all over the country. You might’ve picked up a bag of their potatoes at your local grocery store or warehouse club.
Lenz and his brothers are all retired now. His father George passed away in 2013, and his mom Betty is 93. Six third-generation Lenz farmers have taken over the family farm.
“They were ready,” Lenz said.“They were ready to take over management. And I would hate to be one of these folks who never let go until they die, and their legacy dies with them because they never had a transition plan.”
The family operation is guided by three pillars: work ethic, integrity and common values. On the bottom right corner of the farm’s front sign is a fish, a symbol of Jesus, with a cross in the middle. Catholicism is the glue that binds the family farm, Lenz said.
“We're not all about money. You know, sure, we've got to be profitable, but not every decision is made on how much money can we make,” he said. “That’s just not a successful formula.”
Lenz would love to see the farm continue on. He muses about it becoming a century farm, one that’s been around for 100 years.
“I want a place where families can grow, where if you come from this legacy, that you're well formed, that you can count on them being a good contributor of society,” he said.
But in reality the future of Lenz Farms boils down to one thing: What happens when the Ogallala Aquifer can no longer sustain irrigated farming on Colorado’s Eastern Plains?
“That’s a scary question,” he said. “It all depends on water.”
Next Episode
The Lenz family created a unique blueprint to help the next generation succeed. Learn more about what's required for family members who want to work at Lenz Farrms.
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Credits
The Colorado Dream, Season 5: “Growing a Future” is a production of KUNC News.This episode is hosted, reported and produced by Stephanie Daniel with editing by Sean Corcoran. The theme song was composed by Jason Paton. Michelle Redo sound designed and mixed the episode. Digital editing and social promotion by Alex Murphy. Photos by Jennifer Coombes. Artwork by Alex Murphy and Jenn de la Fuente. The music is from Epidemic Sound. Alex Murphy is the digital editor.Special thanks to Leigh Paterson, Rae Solomon, Brad Turner, Mike Arnold, Kim Rais, Desmond O’Boyle and Christina Cooper. Tammy Terwelp is KUNC’s president and CEO.
