OFI 2024: How To Build A Plan To Buy A Farm When You Are 19 And Starting With Nothing | Lukas Hitchcock | Council Bluffs, Iowa

Lukas Hitchcock is 19 years old, has a passion for farming and has little to no farming background.....and he has a vision.  When Lukas was about seven years old he had some limited exposure to farming on one of his cousin's operations in Iowa.  He can remember that moment, and he cites it as the moment that he fell in love with farming.  However, life circumstances for Lukas were not conducive to him growing up learning about farming or working on a farm.  In fact, based on some bad choices of his parents, his attention had to be diverted away from higher level things like learning about farming to just day to day success. Ultimately, Lukas was thrust in adulthood and independence earlier than most of us, at age sixteen.  As soon as this occurred he started working as a farmhand wherever he could, just to be part of the lifestyle and to learn.  He continues these efforts today, three years later. Lukas has a vision of having his own farm at some point in the future, and like so many of us, young and old, he has no idea how to make that happen given the large financial obstacles that stand in his way. Lukas is doing what everyone in his position does.  He is seeking, researching and looking for information wherever he can find it.  That led him to reach out to me for advice. Instead of having a private telephone conversation about ideas, we decided to record the conversation and publish it as a podcast episode if we both agreed.  At the end, neither of us said anything that we wanted kept confidential, and we decided go ahead with publishing it in the hopes it might help somebody else.