Meet Nellie Mcadams

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nellie Mcadams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nellie, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

No one looking back at any snapshot in my career path would have assumed I’d be doing the exact work that I’m doing now – protecting farmland from development and helping to pass it on to future generations. I didn’t have a trajectory in mind, but trusted my instincts. That includes deciding to work for two years as a farmhand on a Community Supported Agriculture enterprise the year after graduating from law school. My dad questioned several times why I bothered to get a law degree, but it’s been helpful in every job I’ve had. And I wouldn’t have nearly the intimate understanding of ag operations if I hadn’t worked on numerous farms across the world.

One commonality is that whatever I’ve done outwardly for work has been anchored by a deep reverence for the land and soil that sustain us. My grandfather wasn’t religious, but when my cousin lamented that she couldn’t attend church because of the time she needed to spend tending to her hazelnut orchard, my grandfather said “Caring for the land is the closest you can get to god.” That sentiment moves me to support not only the land itself, but the people who steward it for the benefit of all.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Oregon’s diverse soils and microclimates can grow over 220 different agricultural products, from hops to cattle and in between. The soils of the Willamette Valley in particular are some of the best in the world – deposited here 18,000 – 15,000 years ago by the Missoula Floods.

Yet these soils and the agricultural businesses that depend upon them are under constant threat from development, fragmentation, and non-farm use. Despite Oregon’s land use program, which admirably slows the pace of development, we’ve lost over 5.7 million acres from production since 1957, including 43,000 acres which has been permanently lost to urbanization since 1987.

Cities are often sited on flat river bottom land, which is also the best agricultural soil. The largest patches of Class 1 soil in the state lies paved under the cities of Portland and Springfield. We need to do what we can to protect the remaining soils – for our food systems, rural economies, and environment.

The more competition there is for farmland, the more expensive that land becomes, making it impossible for many farmers and ranchers to purchase farmland with farm income alone.

The nonprofit I work for, Oregon Agricultural Trust, works to address the issues of ag land loss, land transfer to the next generation, and farm viability through our intersecting programs. Our Land Protection Program helps farmers and ranchers sell the development rights they don’t need while keeping ownership of the land and keeping it in agricultural production. This is done through a real estate tool called a working land conservation easement, and is a way for landowners to receive cash or tax deductions in exchange for protecting it, not developing it. This helps farmers pay for succession or business costs without selling or fragmenting the land. The protected land is also priced at ag value, making it more affordable to next generation farmers and ranchers.

Our Ag Business Program helps farmers and ranchers pass their farms to future generations – be they family members or not. We educate 1,000 farmers, ranchers, and service providers like attorneys annually. And our 1:1 Succession Advisor helps quarterback succession transactions, evaluate business viability, and much more.

I’m most excited about our donate-protect-transfer work. This is a method for protecting not only the landowner’s property, but land throughout Oregon while helping a next generation farmer afford the property. The landowner donates their property to OAT, who permanently protects it with a working land easement and helps sell it to a farmer or rancher at agricultural value. The proceeds from the sale help OAT protect land, serve producers, and fulfill our mission statewide. We’re currently helping 4 landowners on donate-protect-transfer transactions to protect ag land and its associated habitats.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Law school is useful, whether you practice or not. The process of applying Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion (IRAC) comes in handy for any number of written projects.

More important than understanding what you want to say is how to convey it. It’s absolutely reasonable for people to as “What’s in it for me?,” and any description of a proposed solution should lead with a compelling and honest answer for this question for the main constituent types that you work with. Nonprofit work can be more effective not only when organizations message in this way, but they design programs so that users can address their pressing personal needs while investing in the collective good.

Lastly, I feel that disagreements are most often not people’s ultimate goals, but about the strategies for reaching those shared goals. It’s trite, but finding common ground is so important. If you don’t find it at first, keep distilling and distilling back to how each person wants to feel, then build out complementary strategies from there.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

The recent uncertainty of federal funding has caused many nonprofits to reassess their budgets or at least do contingency planning. Twenty-seven percent of Oregon Agricultural Trust’s budget comes from federal sources. That includes work to create incentives that mutually benefit agriculture and water conservation in the Klamath Basin, and work to protect and restore farmland with associated oak habitat in Land County. We anticipate that funds for nonprofits from all sources will be scarcer than normal for a few years.

To help us weather this situation while furthering our mission, we’re working with landowners who are interested in donating their entire property in order to keep it in production, help next generation farmers and ranchers afford it, and help OAT protect more properties and support more farm businesses. Our staff are uniquely qualified to support these donate-protect-transfer arrangements, from establishing a working land easement on the property to advising landowners on how to spread out their tax deduction over 16 years and helping buyers access financing. The proceeds from the sale allow OAT to further our mission across the state and multiply the impact of the donor’s gift.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Shawn Linehan Photography for picture of me and my parents
First 4 landscape photos are credited to Kyle Pierson

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