Some things change; some don't
OK, Let's talk about the upcomingHeritage Days. I know a lot of classes will be having reunions that weekend (June 24-26), and they usually have a float in the parade which will be Saturday with the parade starting at 10 a.m. with a new beginning at Spoon River College/St. Paul/Coke location, and ending at the same place. That same day there will be the John Bliven Memorial 4-mile road race and walk which will start and end in front of the Old Dairy. I don't know what time that starts, but I'm sure it will end long before the parade.
Way back in 1982, the theme was Heritage of Macomb and Carl Crane and Kay Ruggles were the chairmen, with no grand marshal listed.
One of the planned events will be to meet "Abraham Lincoln." The person impersonating Lincoln is a WIU graduate, so it will be a "homecoming" for him.
When I called the Convention and Visitors Center, I asked Jan Armstrong how the Cinco de Pie-0 fundraiser went. She said they had about 50 entries of pies or cakes, and the money raised goes to support Heritage Days activities. The highest selling item was a cake for $500! The plan is to have the same event next year. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a cherry pie there for me to watch it sell. Sounds like they had a lot of fun at the event.
Then, because our lives and things we do are part of our heritage and who we are, a friend of mine loaned me a paper dated March 8, 1994 that was behind a wall in her house. The headline of the Macomb Journal read, "New farm assessments draw fire." There were 400 to 500 farmers "criticizing new farm tax assessments and the Farm Bill of 1979 caused some farm taxes to double and even triple." Farmland taxes in some instances are extremely high, and the question always comes up, "Why?" Taxing bodies require more money each year for their budgets...I understand that. I also understand the Productivity Index of the farm's soil is a factor. I also understand that at some point, there will be a "breaking point" that high taxes are a breaking point in input costs.
Then, will we have more folks like Bill Gates as the America's largest individual farmland owner as reported by Eric O'Keefe, editor and founder of The Land Report in January 2021?
The largest farmland owner(s) in Illinois was recently reported in Prairie Farmer by Michael Launer. He wrote, "in the prime soils of central Illinois," which he reported as a triangle of Morgan County on the southwest corner, Edgar on the southeast, and Woodford on the top of the triangle The church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is the largest absentee owner owning 38,487.13 acres in that triangle. That was followed by the Scully family in Logan County owned by two grandsons totaling 32,169.30 acres.
Then, Farmland Partners is a real estate investment trust with the largest holdings in Edgar County for a total of 12, 070.08 acres, the Bill Gates with 11,985.52 acres, Dr. Renato Ribeiro with 11,550.17 acres, Shahid Khan 8,745.77 acres, Premiere Farm Properties and Global Ag Properties USA (an investment pension fund for teachers) with acreage of 8,727.92 and 7,437.75 respectively. Jimmy John Liautaud (founder of Jimmy Johns) has 7,135 .41 acres, and Ceres Partners (asset investments inn food and ag) with 3.926.82 acres.
That being said, it looks as though a lot of people appreciate our "heritage" of farmland in Illinois high taxes or not.
Oh, one other quick find: in the toe of an old baby shoe of mine in the cedar chest my Mom had stuffed the shoe with pieces of newspaper. The piece read "Baltic Funds of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in U.S. Frozen by President Roosevelt." Some things never change...there are still wars.
This article originally appeared on The McDonough County Voice: Some things change; some don't
