ABOVE: Leisa Eckerle, The Eckerle Farm. Photo courtesy of Leelanau Ticker.
I sat on the front porch of my home and watched as the first signs of autumn made themselves known. While the leaves gently floated off of the trees around me, I listened as Leisa Eckerle described what it means to her to be a Michigan Farmer. We talked on the phone for a little over an hour about her roots in this work, her family, and her plans to maintain and scale up her operation. With Farm Bill negotiations having gone on two years past the expiration of the legislation and the federal political climate becoming more unstable, farmers like Leisa are left wondering just what kind of future they need to be planning for.
Meet the Family Behind Eckerle Farm
“My father and son are out working in the orchard as we speak,” noted Leisa. The Eckerle Farm is the product of five generations of farming and tending orchards. The family’s roots in agriculture point back to Leisa’s great-great-grandfather, who started growing cherries and farming dairy in the 1800s. After her great-great-grandfather developed his farming operations, Leisa’s father took over growing cherries, while her uncle took over dairy. Their current rural operation, located in Suttons Bay, Michigan, was founded in 1969 and is owned and operated by Leisa, her parents, and her son.
On their 298 acre plot, their primary crop is cherries. Their most recent data totaled 1.3 million pounds of tart and sweet cherries produced in one season. They also grow peaches and apples. In addition to the food they grow, the farm operates a receiving station, Eckerle Receiving, where they aggregate cherries from other farms and prepare them for a local food processor, who gets them into the market. They own a retail cherry store, Benjamin Twiggs—The Original Cherry Store, where they sell various cherry based products, and make trips up to the Upper Peninsula on a weekly basis to supply stores and the Amish market with fruit, fruit products, and sometimes cattle products. For this family, the joy comes in producing a quality product, filled with Michigan history, that they know the community will enjoy.
Day to Day Operations
Leisa is well acquainted with every aspect of this operation and can point back to her earliest days as a baby picking cherries with her mom. For her, this is lifelong work. She started her official job on site as a teen and worked on the farm in the summertime when she was home from college. When it was time, she took over most of the management of the business side of the operation and then began training her son in the family business. “My 83-year-old father and my 26-year-old son are farming together,” noted Leisa. For her, watching the relationships they have built within her family and the community is her favorite part.
In the cooler parts of the year, the focus is tree prunings, mowing orchards, ordering materials, and preparing grounds. Spring brings constant monitoring of trees to see how they withstood the winter, while summer and fall welcome farm maintenance, equipment tune-ups, and harvesting. Even in the stillness of winter, there is work to do to complete taxes, update crop insurance paperwork, develop budgets, organize staff time, and build vendor relationships. The work is never done, and it certainly is not easy, but farmers like the Eckerles show up and put heart into this labor every day.
The Farm Bill
While our farmers are pouring themselves into the work that fuels our lives, lawmakers are still negotiating a major piece of legislation that holds the future of farming in the United States between its lines. As a bit of a recap, the Farm Bill is a major federal law renewed roughly every five years that sets United States policy on agriculture, food assistance, like SNAP, conservation, and rural development. It determines funding and rules for farmers, nutrition programs, and environmental stewardship across the country.
The latest Farm Bill signed in 2018 “The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018”, officially expired on September 30, 2025. In 2023, anticipating the expiration of the bill, the United States House and Senate committees on agriculture gathered to draft a new Farm Bill. Drafts were presented in 2023 and 2024, but an official bill has not been voted on. Because the expiration of the bill triggered uncertainty for many programs, in November of 2025, Congress passed a stop-gap measure that included a one-year extension of some Farm Bill programs in order to prevent a full collapse in services. Because a new five-year authorization of the bill has not been completed, farming has been operating under extensions and temporary fixes.
Not every program received these extensions, however, and there are more than a few farmers who find themselves and their operations hanging in the balance. Because the work to bring about a fair bill is so crucial, Leisa advocates on behalf of farmers through the Michigan Cherry Growers Alliance. Through this, they have outlined policy priorities detailing what they need to see in the next Farm Bill to support specialty crop farms and the families that run them. For Leisa, these issues are not abstract thought exercises up for debate, they are the difference between her family and her farm’s survival and farm land being lost to yet another development.
What Are Specialty Crop Farmers Asking for?
The top priorities outlined by the alliance are: strengthening the Farm Safety Net, securing food and nutrition assistance, protecting conservation programs through the Farm Service Agency (FSA), and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), supporting Fair Trade Agreements, developing a permanent disaster relief program for farmers, and ensuring consistent funding for historically underrepresented farmers. Ensuring protections through these aspects of the Farm Bill will be life changing.
Take strengthening the Farm Safety Net as an example. The farm safety net is a set of federal programs that protect farmers from major financial losses caused by things like crop failures, natural disasters, or severe price drops. The purpose of the safety net is to make sure farms can remain viable in the face of emergency, so that food production remains stable. Farming is a huge risk, especially with the steady rise in inconsistent weather. One day of bad weather and a farm could see a year’s worth of income impacted. Programs like crop insurance, permanent disaster assistance, and emergency FSA loans keep farms operating.
Specialty crop farming is different from traditional crop farming because of the investment into crops that can take years to produce. When disaster strikes, farms like the Eckerle Farm could see five years pass before they see their re-planting efforts pay off. Permanent disaster relief programs would provide funding to farmers in a timely and consistent manner, restabilizing the market, while safeguarding fruit and specialty crop markets.
The call to support fair trade agreements comes because Michigan specialty crop farmers are among the most impacted by foreign trade and tariffs. Currently, the United States receives cherries and other specialty crops through heavily subsidized European fruit markets. This means that the cost of importing food is lower than the cost of buying within the country, leaving many farmers without access to their own local markets. Fair trade agreements help level the playing field, so that our farmers aren’t left out of the equation. If our farmers can’t compete in a fair market, an entire industry could disappear, leaving the regions they have been built in behind. For our cherry farmers and the towns that have built their identities around them, this would be a devastating loss.
Ensuring consistent funding for historically underrepresented farmers is another top priority because the future of agriculture depends on opportunity and access. Many farms are small, minority owned, and/or brand new to the game and representing beginning farmers. Each group has its own set of systemic barriers to resources like land and capital, and unless the work is done to develop programs to support underserved farmers, we will continue to see a decline in farmers across the country.
Leisa explained that her son is 26 and preparing to take over the family business. Even with a lifetime of farming knowledge, as a beginning farmer, he needs to be scaffolded into his role. Leisa has been training him, but she still advocates for access to farmer training at all levels. This looks like implementing trade classes to teach crop and business management, tractor safety, insurance planning, purchasing, and more. There is a deep need for viable options for young farmers who aren’t going to college, who need to be equipped to step into these roles in order for the farms they inherit to stay in operation.
“We will struggle,” noted Leisa. If these programs are underfunded or eliminated, many farmers across the country will suffer. Without insurance and safety net programs, a family legacy could be uprooted in one season. With the loss of so many farms and farm land, the economy will see a significant decline. Agriculture sits at the heart of the Michigan economy and an increase of our dependence on imported goods weakens food security and the local economy.
Planning for the Future
Within the next five years, Leisa plans to manage the transition of the farm from her father to her son. She also plans to expand food education with the opening of the Cherry Education Hub, which will allow them to educate and deepen partnerships between farmers, chefs, and local food makers. She is also excited to expand the retail store with new products.
For Leisa, this legacy work is rooted in family and the land. Even though she currently operates this business through her father’s side, she noted that her mother alsocomes from a farming background, making it so that her family tree is mostly farmers. This passion is in her blood.An equitable and robust farm bill is crucial for farmers like Leisa. It is the key to their stability and the stability of the community served in this work. If agriculture sits at the heart of our Michigan economy, then the farmers that do this work are the blood force that keep this heart pumping.
The work to bring about an equitable farm bill is urgent and we need support in getting it done for our farmers and for our Michigan economy. Congress needs to fund a bill that ensures that all farmers have access to programs that can sustain their lives and the food system across the country. Please share this story and visit our Groundwork Farm Bill Advocacy page to learn more about ways you can support this work. 
Amanda Brezzell, Groundwork Policy & Engagement Specialist, amanda.brezzell@groundworkcenter.org
