Commentary
This fall, families will gather on farms across America for hayrides, pumpkin patches, and farm-to-table dinners. These moments seem small, but they are lifelines—not just for the families creating memories but for the farmers trying to survive. Now, in Oregon, those lifelines are under threat.I was deeply concerned when I came across a recent post from Topaz Farm in Oregon. The family behind the farm was urging people to speak up against a proposed rule from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) that threatens their survival—and the survival of many small farms like theirs.
What the DLCD is proposing sounds bureaucratic, but its consequences couldn’t be more human: The agency wants to restrict or outright ban agritourism activities on farmland zoned as Exclusive Farm Use. That could mean no school tours, no pumpkin patches, no farm-to-table dinners, no hayrides, no small on-farm gatherings that connect people to land and food. Oregon’s centralized land-use system means that this would apply statewide. In short, farms would be allowed to grow crops but forbidden from growing community.
At first, I had a small sigh of relief realizing this battle was specific to Oregon and not Texas, where my own farm, Sovereignty Ranch, depends heavily on agritourism to survive. But what’s happening there is a warning to all of us.
On the surface, rules like these might sound harmless or even well-intentioned. Oregon has long sought to protect farmland from urban sprawl through centralized policies. But what’s unfolding now exposes the blind spot in those policies. While the land may be protected, the people who farm it are being pushed out.
I avidly believe we need to protect farmland. We cannot keep expanding endlessly, turning more soil into subdivisions, asphalt, and tract developments. But protecting the land alone isn’t enough. We need human beings farming that land. We need to move back toward a human-centric food system—both on the farmer’s side and on the consumer’s side.
I’m not saying there’s no place for big farms. There always will be. But even the largest operations should have transparency, stewardship, and a human being at the helm. Without people connected to the land, agriculture becomes just another faceless industry.
Margins in farming are already razor-thin. For many of us, events such as school tours, farm dinners, and hayrides aren’t just side projects—they’re lifelines. These are the things that allow us to keep the farm afloat while also doing the hard work of growing real food. Agritourism supplements the bottom line, yes, but it does something deeper: It bridges the growing gap between people and the land that feeds them.
In a society where we’ve lost more than 140,000 farms in the past decade, we’re going to need the next generation to be inspired to pick up this work—to want to grow food, steward animals, and care for soil. That inspiration doesn’t come from textbooks. It comes from experience.
Although I grew up on a small family farm, we often visited and supported other farms that offered these kinds of experiences. Some of my most vivid and cherished childhood memories were created through those moments—picking blueberries and strawberries, going on hayrides, visiting pumpkin patches, and getting to see where food really comes from. These experiences didn’t just shape my childhood—they shaped my worldview. They gave me reverence for farming, for seasons, for hard work, and for the land itself.
Today, I’m proud to provide those same opportunities to others. At Sovereignty Ranch, we host pumpkin patches, hayrides, and farm-to-table dinners—not just to pay the bills but because I believe people need these touchpoints with nature, with animals, with farming, and with the reality of how food is grown. Without them, farming becomes abstract. Nature becomes something we watch on screens instead of something we live alongside.
What Oregon’s DLCD is proposing is a warning to the rest of us. If these rules pass, the land might remain farmland, but it won’t be farmed by families like the ones who built Oregon’s agricultural heritage. It will be consolidated, bought up by corporations, and run by people who don’t live there, who don’t host field trips, and who don’t invite the public in.
And this points to an even deeper problem: Top-down, centralized decisions rarely understand or reflect the nuanced needs of the communities they affect. Policies made far from the land itself—policies detached from the people who live, farm, and feed others—will always have unintended consequences. When the government steps too far away from the ground truth, it tends to write rules that serve bureaucracy over humanity.
This is how we lose not just farms but farmers. This is how we lose connection.
If we want agriculture to survive in America, we must protect the relationship between people and the land. That relationship isn’t strengthened by closing the gates—it’s strengthened by opening them.
Agritourism is not a luxury. It is essential—for farms, for families, and for the future.
If we want farms—and farmers—to survive, we need to speak up. We need to show up. We need to keep the gates open.
