Farming through the generations
By ANNE COOK
News-Gazette Staff Writer

   THOMASBORO – Roger and Gary Grace's rich glacial fields are a legacy from English ancestors who migrated west to Illinois 150 years ago.
   The Thornburn family saw opportunities in the land that would later became part of Somer Township. Subsequent generations built barns and hog houses and other facilities that still stand on the east side of U.S. 45.
   In 1891, "Pioneers of Champaign County" said of John Thornburn, a Civil War veteran and founder of this family farm:
   "He is outspoken and radical in his political views and has fought the battles of his (Republican) party with courage and fidelity.
   "He helped to lay out about all the roads and built about all the bridges in the township. He now has a fine farm of 250 acres and knows how to enjoy life. He has no mortgages or debts to annoy him, and he is about as happy and prosperous as any man could wish to be."
   The Grace brothers are descended from John Thornburn on their mother's side. Betty Grace's father, H.R. Shade, bought the land where the buildings now stand.
   Shade raised prize-winning purebred Holsteins in the barn built there in 1918, and he took that business into town, where it became Shadeland Dairy, when Lyle Grace, father of Roger and Gary, returned from World War II and took over the farm.
   Today, the Grace brothers prefer not to say how many acres they farm. Together, they work to keep focused on the future, the evolution that's changing the way their father and other family farmers take care of business.
   As new president of the Champaign County Farm Bureau, Gary Grace will address issues that could upset the careful balance that makes the family farming system work. Those issues, he said, include mergers and acquisitions, farm prices, future farm legislation and genetically modified organisms.
   "We need to resolve GMO issue so we can grow what we want to grow but be responsive to our consumers," he said. "We don't grow for ADM. We grow for the people who use our products."
   Roger and Gary Grace took over the family's farm in the 1970s when their father retired to spend more time working on agricultural issues at a state and national level.
   Gary Grace was already farming with his father, but Roger Grace came back from Washington, D.C., where he worked as a legislative aide for the late U.S. Rep. Ed Madigan, R-Lincoln, who later became U.S. secretary of agriculture.
   "I learned to see issues from both sides," he said.
   In the years to come, there were plenty of issues to confront. In the early '80s, a farm economy inflated by booming world markets and land prices collapsed. The Russians stopped buying grain, commodity prices plummeted, and land prices halved.
   But the Graces and other Illinois farmers buckled down and moved on.
   Peter Barry, a University of Illinois agricultural economist, said East Central Illinois farmers fare better in tough times than farmers in other areas.
   "What's unique about this area is the heavy reliance on crop production, the very productive land and the high incidence of leasing," he said.
   Barry said those three factors support family farming systems. He said Illinois Farm Business Farm Management records show that farmers typically lease about 80 percent of the land they farm, and most leases share risks with the landowners.
   "That's a major distinction of central Illinois and Illinois," Barry said.
   Most farmers have long-term relationships with at least some of their land owners, and that fact tends to stabilize their own operations, he said.
   "Corporate agriculture's just not dominant," Barry said. "In the U.S., less than 5 percent of the total farmland is owned by very large corporations."
   The Grace brothers know their land well, one key to keeping it productive. They don't need yield monitors on their combines to tell them which table-flat fields need better drainage.
   "We have drainage problems," Gary Grace said. "We use global positioning systems for fertilizer application, and we're very interested in adding to that system, using yield monitors to give us more information about drainage improvements."
   The Graces look for opportunities to grow crops for special markets, markets that pay a premium. The best deals change almost every year, so it takes time and planning to make specialty crops work.
   They have grown corn for the Frito-Lay Inc. elevator at Sidney, they've grown high-oil corn, and they've grown seed beans.
   "In central Illinois we have a strength – many different markets for value-added crops," Gary Grace said.
   "Everyone's looking for a premium over number two corn," said Roger Grace.
   The brothers keep the old barn and outbuildings in good repair, including a carpenter's shop built for the man who constructed the barn, a reminder of their heritage.
   "My brother and sister and I own this together, we are committed to agriculture, and our children and grandchildren are, too," said Betty Grace, who lives just around the corn from the farmstead.
   "It's a memorial to our father, and we're proud of it."

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