This is the second 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.
It’s early May and planting season on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. The sound of a tractor with an attached corn planter pierces the warm, tranquil morning air. It steadily moves around a pivot – a large circle plot of brown land.
But inside the cab, it’s a quiet oasis for farmer Marty Buoy, who starts working at 6 am. He monitors several small screens as the semi-autonomous machine fertilizes row after row of corn seeds. This is one of Lenz Farm’s 35 corn fields covering about 4,500 acres of land.
“Watching the lines go nice and straight, it’s kind of therapeutic. So, it's definitely a good time to really do some strategic, deep thinking,” Buoy said.
Buoy has a lot to think about. He’s the CEO of Lenz Farms, based near the small city of Wray in Yuma County. He’s also one of six partners and owners who share management responsibilities while also still working in the fields.
“We all manage our respective areas, we really try to get out and get involved in the operation,” he said. “This is what we enjoy doing. This is why we're farming.”
Lenz Farms is a big operation spanning 12,000 acres. It employs 13 full time workers and around 27 seasonal ones. The farm grows corn, wheat, edible beans and potatoes. It runs cattle and operates a feed lot and a packing shed. Some of these products are sold locally, others across the country.
The partners are involved in both the business side and production side of the operation. It’s part of a well-thought-out strategy decades in the making, like a “mom and pop shop” meets “corporate enterprise.”
Family Meeting
Six weeks later, it’s 7 a.m. on a Monday, and Buoy and the other partners are gathered in Lenz Farms’ main office for the weekly business meeting. They sit in a simple conference room wearing jeans, short sleeve shirts and ballcaps. There’s also a pair of cowboy boots.
The current partners are affectionately referred to as generation three or the G-3s. The four retired partners and farm founders, the G-2s, are also here to offer advice and share their wisdom. All the partners are men, but their wives are involved in the operation to varying degrees. A few are here today.
Lenz Farms is a family operation; everyone is related. It’s a mix of sons, fathers, mothers, cousins, siblings and in-laws.
Buoy starts the meeting off with a prayer – a reading from Matthew 12. Faith is the glue that binds this family farm. Their operation is guided by three pillars: work ethic, integrity and common values.
“There's a lot of good and bad things that come with family operations,” he said.
Buoy likens managing the farm to a marriage. There’s give and take. Compromise. Admitting fault and moving on. He says the G-3s have learned a lot from the G-2s, especially how to communicate effectively.
“It's fair to say they didn't always get along, but they talked through their problems, and they were able to still work together,” he said. “There's a lot of family operations that aren't able to do that.”
In 2023, family farms accounted for 96% of all U.S. farms. And the USDA says the vast majority of them bring in less than $350,000 annually. Lenz Farms is not in that category. It’s a large-scale family farm, meaning it generates a million dollars or more. Large scale family farms are a very small but mighty group, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. production.
Lenz Farms has really grown over the years. But many other family farms have gone in the opposite direction. Since the 80s Farm Crisis, the U.S. has lost around 600,000 farms and over 150 million acres of farmland.
Family farms have disappeared due to a number of reasons. There are economic factors, like fluctuating commodity prices; environmental factors, like water scarcity; and social factors, like young people who don’t want to join the family business and leave their rural towns. And, a farm might not have a succession plan.
“Succeeding generations of young people understand and appreciate the value of hard work, and they certainly have learned that value by watching their grandparents and their parents work extraordinarily hard,” 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.
When it comes to succession, Vilsack said there are lots of factors at work.
“Do I want a farm? Does my brother and sister want a farm?" he said. "If they do, can we afford it? If they don't, how do we equitably share the benefits of whatever the farming operation can generate.”
Before entering politics, Vilsack was a small town lawyer in Iowa. In the 1980s, he represented farmers facing foreclosure.
“They were rooted, literally rooted to the ground, into the land, soil. Their whole identity was connected to that farm,” he said. “So saving the farm was really important to them,”
Even though the U.S. has lost a tremendous number of farms and farmland over the decades, that hasn’t stopped us from being one of the top ag producers in the world.
In 2022, American farms reported record-high profits. But the industry has declined since then due to rising debt, declining product prices and labor shortages. Some experts say a farm crisis - similar to the one in the 1980s - may be looming.
Lenz Farms has survived by figuring out a business strategy that works for them.
Generational Farming
Five decades ago, George and Betty Lenz learned that farmers on Colorado’s Eastern Plains had access to deep well drilling. They could buy rights to pump water from the underground Ogallala Aquifer. This transformed the sandy soil prairie land, allowing growers to irrigate their fields.
In 1973, the Lenzes bought a small plot of land in Yuma County. Soon, George and four of his sons were successfully growing corn before expanding to other crops and livestock.
Four years later, they created a simple general partnership agreement. It evolved over time to cover other things like estate planning, buy-sell agreements and subsidiaries. They wanted to keep management and ownership in the family.
“We need to have insurance policies for in case something would happen to us, to cover their debts. So we just added one layer after another layer over the years,” said Rod Lenz, a retired Lenz Farms partner and an original owner.
These layers are important because in the early days other farms in the area had family members who didn't talk to each other, Lenz said. As a result, those operations would be broken up into pieces, making it difficult to succeed.
One way the Lenzes avoided in-fighting was to create a process for the next generations to join the family business.
“We knew that we couldn't just let them get from high school and come back to the farm. They needed to acquire some skills,” he said.
This is how it works: If you’re a family member or in-law, you must have at least a two-year degree and two years of work experience at another company. Then, the farm has to have a job opening which you interview for. After a few years, you’re eligible to become a partner.
“This is about work ethics. This is about integrity. It's about a common value system. You've got to have those things,” he said. “It takes a while to have enough maturity to be able to appreciate that.”
Joining the Farm
Buoy was raised on a ranch in north central Nebraska. He has a real gift for fixing things, skills he honed as a kid working on tractors and other machines at his grandpa’s mechanic shop. Buoy stayed in state for college and studied diesel mechanics. It was there he met his wife, Yvonne Buoy (née Lenz). After graduating, he worked for a Caterpillar dealership until 2004, when he got a call to join Lenz Farms. They needed a mechanic.
“If you come out here and you're a good fit, you have a chance to grow in and to be a part owner of the farm,” Buoy said.
In 2006, Buoy was the first third-generation Lenz farmer to become a partner. He got a loan from the bank and the farm. Starting off he bought half of “Grandpa George’s,” the family patriarch’s, share.
“They done a really good job laying it out," he said. “I can't say it's worked flawlessly, but it's been pretty darn effective.”
Buoy and his wife have four sons. Growing up, they’ve helped out on the farm along with their cousins. While it was sometimes difficult to keep them engaged as children, he said, they learned how to work.
“That is showing up every day at a specific time and doing a job that, I'll be honest, a lot of jobs these guys done during COVID were not real fun jobs,” he said. “They all did it without complaining. And it's that character building and all of that. So probably the funnest part is just watching their character grow.”
As teenagers and young adults, Buoy’s sons still assist him around the farm.
Growing Season
By mid-June, Lenz Farms looks very different. The brown land has been transformed into lush fields of green plants, leaves and stalks. Harvest season is quickly approaching.
At a cornfield, one of the tower drivelines on the center pivot irrigation system is broken. The whole thing has stopped working. It’s 90 degrees, so Buoy needs to fix the sprinkler ASAP. He enlists the help of his third son, 19-year-old Andrew Buoy. Together, they grab a hammer and other tools from the back of Marty’s truck, then walk through the six-foot tall, vibrant green corn stalks to repair the machine.
A few of Buoy’s sons, as well as his nieces and nephews, have expressed interest in getting a job at Lenz Farms. But he and the other partners don’t put pressure on their kids to come back.
“I mean, they have to go out and prove themselves in the world and make sure they're bringing something back to the operation that helps us grow going into the future,” he said.
Lenz Farms has become infinitely more complex over time, according to Buoy. There are more employees, more products to manage, higher input costs and the ongoing threat of water scarcity.
The G-2s expanded horizontally by buying land. The G-3s are growing the operation vertically, adding more value to their products, like a potato packing shed and cattle feedlot.
One day soon, the fourth generation, the G-4s, will take over management of the family operation. The future of Lenz Farms will be in their hands.
“That's a powerful thing about our farm, and it's amazing to see when it happens, when we focus everybody on one thing, I mean, we can move the earth,” Buoy said.
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, Brad Turner, Kim Rais, Desmond O’Boyle and Christina Cooper. Tammy Terwelp is KUNC’s president and CEO.
