Shawano County is expected to collect 2 1/2 times as much money for its farmland lease compared to what it received the past several years.
Bids for the leasing of the 284.2 acres were opened at the Nov. 4 meeting of the land conservation and extension committee.
The winning bid was awarded to Greg and Brad Schmidt, who bid $316.68 per acre for a total of $90,000 per year. The new lease will be for five years.
The last time the lease was awarded for five years was 2016. After that lease ended, the county signed one-year contracts because of the plans to have a solar farm built at the site. Once those two proposals fell by the wayside, officials chose to return to a five-year deal.
The farm is off state Highway 22 in the Town of Belle Plaine.
The agreement runs from April 1, 2027, to March 31, 2032. Crop rotation and a nutrient management plan are required.
The county will be paid in three installments — one-third each April 1, June 30 and Dec. 1.
Bids ranged from $130 per acre up to $316.68.
“That’s quite a difference from $130 to $316,” Supervisor Steve Schinke said. “I think that’s a good bid. I know stuff going over $300.”
Previously, Kraig Rosenow had a one-year lease at $125 acre or $35,525 for the year.
Officials have yet to determine how the funds will be used. Under the one-year lease agreements, the county agreed to use 100% of the funds as a “flow through” to the Shawano Area Agricultural Society to cover the maintenance and capital improvement costs of the county-owned fairgrounds property.
The question before supervisors is how much of the $90,000 will be used for that purpose and whether funds will be spent on other projects.
The history of the Shawano County-owned farm spans from early county welfare efforts in the 19th century to its eventual closure and transition in the late 1990s.
Before the county farm existed, Shawano County cared for its poor and injured lumbermen in a county-funded “poor house.”
Around the turn of the 20th century, the Shawano County Board looked for more permanent and cost-effective ways to house the county’s needy and “insane” individuals, rather than paying other counties to care for them.
The county purchased farmland in the Town of Belle Plaine to build a combined county poor farm and insane asylum.
The farm was designed to be largely self-sustaining. Inmates and residents of both institutions were expected to perform a vast majority of the agricultural labor to raise food for the facilities.
The old asylum and poor farm structure operated for decades until June 1978, when a new 102-bed nursing home — the Maple Lane Health Care Facility — opened.
In March 1997, the Shawano County Board voted to shut down the county farm operations. All remaining farm assets were auctioned off across 1997 and 1998. Since then, the cropland has been rented out, and other portions of the property have been replanted with trees or designated for recreational use.
