By Yanqi Xu and Evelyn Mejia
At first glance,the sight of this south-central Nebraska farm is not much different from its counterparts in the corn belt. But the corn here grows on a natural diet of animal manure. No synthetic fertilizer. No pesticides, either. The crop stands alongside alfalfa and trees in the corners of the fields.
Here, farm employees grow both field corn and popcorn. They find the location a good fit for hard red winter wheat that’s made into organic bread. The land, all 9,000 acres of it, is farmed organically by a Philadelphia-based, multi-state company called Belltown Farms.
Belltown now owns about half of the land it farms near Holstein, a small town outside Hastings. That purchase and four others in southwest Nebraska — at a price tag of $41 million — made the out-of-state corporate farm the second-largest buyer of Nebraska’s increasingly expensive farmland by money spent between 2018 and 2022.
Belltown’s total Nebraska farmland portfolio now stands at nearly 19,000 acres, about two thirds of the total farmland the company operates across the country, with other locations in Illinois, Michigan, Texas and New York.
Belltown is, in one way, very much like other recent top buyers of Nebraska farmland.
Those buyers were mostly corporate farms, multinational corporations and out-of-state investors, as detailed in the Flatwater Free Press series “Who’s Buying Nebraska?”
Flatwater analyzed land sales made in the open market between 2018 and 2022 from data originally gathered by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications data journalism class.
The analysis found seven of the top 10 buyers of ag land by money spent during that period were organizations headquartered outside Nebraska, including a North Carolina investment firm, the Silicon Valley social media giant Facebook and the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church.
But Belltown stands out for its differences, too. While other big farmland investment companies sometimes lease out their land, Belltown directly operates its farms. And Belltown raises organic crops only, while proving false the stereotype that organic farmers are small, quirky and unable to turn a profit.
“We are not interested in using land that’s going to be turned into fuel. We want to raise food for people or for animals,” said Brian Halweil, a representative for Belltown Farms.
Belltown bought the Holstein-area farm from the Granstrom family, who operated an organic farm until Johnny Granstrom retired. The farm has been organic since the 1990s.
Before that, Belltown had begun converting its four other farms in Nebraska into organic. All but one of Belltown’s Nebraska locations are certified organic, with that one, in Wauneta, expected to be certified later this year.
A relative newcomer, Belltown now makes up a significant portion of the state’s organic sector. It’s one of the biggest organic grain producers in the state, according to the USDA Organic Integrity Database.
Nebraska reported a little over 113,000 acres of organic cropland in 2021, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture survey.
And the value of the Belltown land is pricey — and still rising. That land and related infrastructure is now worth $46 million, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of data provided by the Nebraska Department of Revenue.
Dave Hutchinson, owner of a 5,000-acre grass-fed buffalo and beef ranch in the Sandhills, describes Belltown’s organic operation with one word: huge.
“If you have (19,000) acres, you just lost a lot of individual farmers and ranchers,” said Hutchinson.
While lamenting the loss of family farms and the more tailored approach to managing, Hutchinson said he’s glad to see organic operations reducing chemicals in agricultural production.
Halweil doesn’t think the company is competing with average farm families in pursuing Nebraska farmland. The company came against mostly bidders who were already of significant size and looking to expand, Halweil said.
Before buying its first farm, Belltown studied states from the Pacific Northwest, through the Great Plains, all the way down to Texas, Halweil said.
Between farmland that’s very fertile and expensive and less fertile but more affordable, the company found a sweet spot for productivity and price in Nebraska.
“We’re not going to bid on a farm or pay for a farm that’s well above that price. We’ve got a fairly narrow range,” said Halweil.
Belltown’s founders used to run wind and solar energy companies in both Europe and the US. When they pivoted to agriculture, they say they modeled the farming operation after the energy business, built on sustainable infrastructure and supply chain. In 2019, the company made its initial purchase, a 2,500-acre farm in Michigan.
A Belltown farm typically starts at that size. And its size, Halweil said, does matter.
Organic farming can be management-intensive. But growing row crops allows Belltown to use machines instead of relying on farm labor.
The 9,000-acre Holstein operation employs roughly a dozen workers, he said, mostly Nebraskans and a few seasonal workers from South Africa.
The company sells about half of its products as livestock feed, Halwell said, and the other half for food production — ready to be milled into flour or tortilla chips, turned into oat milk or brewed for beer.
In frequent rotation, the company produces corn, soybeans and wheat as well as minor crops such as barley, peas, alfalfa and sorghum that’s turned into gluten-free flour.
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