On a family-owned farm in Rochelle, a tiny unincorporated area in Alachua County southeast of Gainesville on the way to Hawthorne, Keilyn Fuller is learning what it takes to sustain a century-old legacy.
His grandfather, John Nix, runs Nix Farms, a cattle operation that has been in their family since 1910. For the 22-year-old Fuller, the responsibility to carry it forward is something held near and dear to his heart.
“You always want to make sure that you're not the person that kills the farm or kills the legacy,” Fuller said. “I get help from my grandfather with old school skills … And now, with social media and the internet, you can now see how other people are running their farms and how they're advertising and how they're running.”
Fuller, a University of Florida student studying Agricultural Operations Management, represents a growing wave of Floridians farmers seeking to combine traditional farming with modern tools. He intends to maximize profit and expand income streams beyond selling cattle.
“I try to build it and think of ideas for the future,” Fuller said, “of how we can change it instead of getting finances through just cattle in other ways of tours, agribusiness, weddings.”
For farm owners in Florida, learning about new ways to build profit for their farm is a necessity amid the ongoing loss of agricultural land.
A 2024 report by the UF Center for Landscape Conservation Planning and 1000 Friends of Florida, revealed the state could lose more than 2.2 million acres of agricultural land by 2070 if sprawling development continues.
Generational, small farms play a crucial role in the environmental landscape, said Dr. Zachary Brym, a UF Institute of Food Agricultural Sciences agroecologist, mainly because of the benefits that come with soil health.
“There is very much a distinguishing feature for a farmer that owns the land and has kind of a generational opportunity to develop a multigenerational farming business,” Brym said, “than perhaps a business or an entrepreneur who's just getting started or has to lease the land.” .
He said that when land remains under the same ownership for decades, and when cared for properly, the soil can continue to support its natural processes and increase organic matter. This improves microbial activity and nutrient cycling.
“Big farms tend to have efficiency in their operations and so they have larger size equipment and supply chains that are well-established and reliable,” Brym said. “But the negative consequence is that machinery and intensity of farming is going to drive down environmental consequences.”
Smaller farms often rely on creativity and community to stay afloat.
That's the case for Ducky’s Farm in Alachua. For married couple Alex and Alix Venable —" “Alex squared,” as Alex Venable likes to joke — that foundation was built by merging two distinct backgrounds. Husband Alex, originally from Eunice, Louisiana, said he moved to Florida to pursue fatherhood. He brought years of experience as a restaurant consultant, while his wife, Alix, known by the nickname “Ducky,” was a realtor who had previously raised livestock and cared for pecan trees on a farm.
At Ducky’s Farm, reliance on community became a lifeline after Hurricane Helene.
“We lost probably half of our crops last year because of the hurricane,” Alex Venable said.
Unlike large commercial operations, the couple could not afford their own tractor to clear the damage. Instead, they relied on a neighbor with a tractor and a volunteer group of over 20 people to clear mounds of limbs taller than their horse trailer.
"For it to look like this right now is honestly a miracle," Alex Venable said, noting that for small homestead owners, recovery often depends on the help of friends and customers met at farmers markets.
“It’s more likely for a small farm to be doing multiple things because of the economy and because they are closer to producing food for the table,” Brym said.
That connection to the local food-to-table community is especially visible in Alachua County, Brym added, where small farms benefit from farmers markets and local buyers.
The Venables are taking this concept by storm with a goal to build a dining space directly on their land. Alex Venable is currently laying 180 paver bricks "to create a foundation for farm-to-table dinners intended to host 20 to 40 guests.
By having their food truck and smoker onsite, they intend to utilize their skills as chefs with their current reality as farmers.
"We collided our dreams of really wanting to be farmers and chefs," Alex Venable said, explaining that the goal is to share a business model that “starts in the soil.”
Bridging the gap between the farmer and the plate is a priority that extends beyond the Venables.
For Keilyn Fuller, buying food from local vendors allows customers to see firsthand where their food comes from, which is something that corporate farms can’t always offer.
“I would say it's like if I'm selling to someone that wants to buy,” Fuller said. “It's like you know who you're buying from. You know this person. You can come out to the farm. You can talk to this person.” In factories, “you don't know how they're treating the cows, what they're giving the cows, what's going on in the factory,” Fuller continued. “You just know they just get shipped off to a store to be sold.”
For now, Nix Farms stays afloat through cattle sales, but Fuller knows that to keep the legacy alive, he’ll have to think beyond tradition – through social media. Fuller has begun an Instagram account in the hopes of reaching a larger customer base.
He notes that while his grandfather, John Nix, may not fully understand the new ways that media is shaping consumer trends, Nix is on board with Fuller's goals.
“At this point in his life, he got the farm to its max potential,” Fuller said. “So now I'm trying to get the farm to the max potential at my point in this generation.”
For the Venables, staying afloat means finding creative ways to reduce costs and waste through diversification. To save money on fuel and the six to seven hours it takes to mow the property, they rotate sheep and a donkey through the pastures to eat the grass and fertilize the soil. They also partner with Daft Cow Brewery in Alachua to collect spent grains, which helps the brewery reduce waste while providing free feed for the farm's animals.
Ultimately, their sustainability moved away from wholesale raw nuts to creating a unique product.
"The key to all of this is, as a modern farmer, we had to have a niche," Alix Venable said. "That niche was pecan butter."
