A great many residents of big cities and small towns want to visit nearby farms and gardens and buy locally grown foods in their restaurants, food courts, and grocery stores. Most will be disappointed because of well-known barriers to young farmers who lack financing for land, marketing, and affordable food processing.
In response, our company is developing a package of privately funded business services to increase local financing for local food systems.
Farmer-Led Demonstrations Projects
Our two Omaha area farms are part of farmer-led demonstrations to expand and organize new farms and gardens with local financing.
Although counterintuitive for many small farm advocates, the first step toward more sustainable local food systems is to make small farms bigger. This is the responsibility of farmland owners and trusted local investors.
The goal is to meet the needs of more nearby urban residents who want healthy and affordable local foods. This requires more efficient and more diversified local production and processing systems with the capacity to compete with imported (non-local) foods.
As farmland owners, we must work with trusted local investors to create local economies-of-scale – without selling farms or taking on more debt. This last point is important. To stay in business over time, farm families must always have controlling interest in the farms and gardens that they operate.
Production Units
Our Bennington farm and garden offer an object lesson on need for landowner and farmer-controlled land consolidation and local financing. My late father, Bob Steffen, formerly farm manager for Father Flanagan at Boys Town, raised over 50 different seasonal vegetables on this farm. He sold most of his produce to restaurants in Omaha.
But this 78-acre farm and garden is much too small to supply even a few products on a year-around basis to a local school, restaurant, or grocery store. To scale up, reduce costs, and increase variety, we are asking farmland owners in the Omaha area to work with their neighbors and local investors to consolidate production of some crops and livestock, and lease farms to experienced operators.
We call these combined operations “production units.” Once incorporated, the farms and gardens in these units will be leased, with purchase options, to experienced producers selected by the unit landowners.
Please read on and then call me with your questions and comments.
Thank you.
Jim Steffen, President
Massena Corporation
402-317-2639
jim@massenafarms.com
PS: Our Bennington Agrihood website has more on housing and local foods.
Posted: 11-15-2026