Hi Jennifer:

I read your article in the Ohio Farmer about “college tuition reality,” and boy, it does hit home. Being from Clinton County, I graduated from Ohio State University in 1983 with a degree in agriculture, major in animal science, and came home to continue to farm grain and livestock with my parents until about 2000. My parents still own the farmland and my cousin farms the ground, as we decided to get out of the hog business (actually at a good time, due to the livestock industry structure).

It is interesting to be in the middle of growing the family farmland from the passing of my grandparents. I had a big say (since I am the next generation of ownership with my two sisters) in whether to sell or my parents to purchase my grandparents’ farmland at $7,000/acre just a few years ago (now $10,000/acre). How does farmland pay for itself @ $7,000-10,000/acre value? When I was at OSU, every ag professor started their first day of the class quarter with this statement — “Everything I am going to teach you is only good for about 10 to 15 years, and then technology will change things. … and if you are going back to the farm, you better marry it or inherit it.”

Our two daughters, born in 1995 and 1999, are currently in college — one in a Ph.D. in psychology (which is five more years, not corporate-sponsored or paid for), and our youngest in her third year at Bowling Green State University, and just two days ago swore into the Navy. She is excited, and it will be good training experience and help to pay for tuition debt. She will go back in to finish her fourth year of her gerontology (long-term care administration) degree and probably get a master’s in gerontology in the future.

I look back and do not regret my college years (at approximately $10,000 for all four years). I know college is the right thing for both of our daughters. But how are the generation-to-generation changes of education and farming and family business plans supposed to work with long-term vision? The vision seems blurry, but fortunately, we are all healthy. I guess, as long as we are healthy, we will figure it out.

Thanks for your article! I know we are not alone.

Jeffrey A. Murphy,
certified advertising specialist,
Wilmington, Ohio