Who Will Still Have a Place at the Gate?

There is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with watching a piece of ground sell for more money than a young rancher could ever reasonably afford. It’s not heartbreak because the land is not worth it. In many ways, it is heartbreak because it is worth it. Good grass, clean water, productive soil and a piece of ground that has been cared for by generations of people are worth something. They should be. The families who have spent decades building ranches should be able to see the value of what they have worked for. But somewhere along the way, the value of agricultural land has grown so high that the people who want nothing more than to work it are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford a place of their own.

The numbers tell part of the story. USDA data released in 2026 shows that U.S. farm real estate values continued to climb, with farm real estate averaging about $4,350 per acre in 2025 and pastureland averaging $1,920 per acre nationwide. In the Southern Plains, which includes Oklahoma, the average value of farm real estate was about $2,880 per acre, while pastureland averaged about $2,260. Those are averages, and anyone who has looked at good ranch country knows how quickly the actual price can climb depending on location, quality and demand.

They are not making more prairie. They are not making more Osage County. They are not making more of the grasslands that have supported cattle, wildlife and families for generations. There is only so much ground, and every time a piece of it changes hands, someone is deciding what that land will mean for the next generation.

And that is where I think this conversation gets uncomfortable.

The People Who Want to Ranch But Can’t Buy the Land

There are young people all across this country who desperately want to ranch. They grew up around cattle. They know how to doctor calves, fix fence, move cows, read grass and watch the sky for rain. They have the knowledge and the work ethic, and many of them have spent years working for other people because they understand that you do not simply wake up one morning and own a ranch. They know it takes time. They know it takes sacrifice. They know it takes money.

What they increasingly cannot find is an affordable place to begin.

A person can have everything that should make them a good rancher and still not have enough money to buy the land required to become one. They can have cattle, equipment, experience and the willingness to work until their hands hurt, but none of those things change what an acre costs. At some point, wanting it badly enough is not enough. The numbers have to work, and for an increasing number of young producers, they simply do not.

That is a difficult reality for an industry that constantly talks about the importance of the next generation.

Understanding My Blessings

I also have to recognize that I am speaking about this from a place of incredible privilege.

I am lucky enough to have a family ranch to go back to if that is what I choose to do. I grew up knowing there is a place where I belong, a place where I can work cattle, ride through pastures and still recognize the same land my family has spent generations caring for. If I decide that ranching is the life I want, I have a starting point that a lot of young people simply do not have.

There are kids who grew up on ranches who have something similar. They may one day inherit their family’s land, cattle and responsibilities. They may have the opportunity to take what their parents and grandparents built and carry it forward. That is an incredible gift, and I do not think anyone should feel guilty for being fortunate enough to receive it. In fact, I think those of us who have been given that opportunity should understand just how fortunate we are.

But that privilege also makes it impossible for me to ignore the people who do not have it.

Not every young person who wants to ranch was born into a ranching family. Not everyone has a parent who can leave them a pasture. Not everyone has a grandfather who can help them buy their first piece of ground. Some people have to build the entire thing from the ground up, and when land prices continue to rise, that mountain becomes steeper and steeper.

I do not want the future of ranching to become a matter of whether you were lucky enough to be born behind the right gate.

When Bigger Starts Making it Harder for Someone Else

There are ranch owners who have spent decades, sometimes generations, building enormous operations. Some have bought neighboring places every time one has come available. Some have inherited significant holdings and continued expanding them. Others have built enough wealth outside of agriculture that they can enter a land auction with a financial advantage that a young rancher simply cannot compete with.

There is nothing inherently wrong with growing a ranch. I understand the desire to expand. I understand wanting to connect pastures, improve grazing management, increase carrying capacity, protect a family operation or prevent a neighboring ranch from being divided into houses. There is real value in keeping large pieces of agricultural land intact, and there are ranchers who have done extraordinary things with the ground they have been entrusted with.

But when someone has enough money to consistently pay more than the agricultural value of a piece of ground, that does something to the market around them. A young rancher trying to buy land based on what cattle, grass and a reasonable agricultural return can support may be competing against someone who can afford to look at that same acre through an entirely different financial lens.

That is where growth can have consequences.

One large landowner buying a ranch does not necessarily change the world. But when enough large buyers continue absorbing neighboring properties, the comparable sales begin to change. The price that one person was willing and able to pay becomes the number everyone else has to look at the next time a ranch comes up for sale.

And suddenly, the young rancher who was already struggling to get started is competing against a market that no longer seems to care what the land can reasonably produce.

When the Land is Bought for Something Other Than Ranching

Rural land is not only being sought by ranchers anymore. In Oklahoma, illegal marijuana operations have purchased rural properties, sometimes paying prices that would be difficult for a cattle producer to justify based on the agricultural value of the land. When those operations are eventually raided and shut down, some of those properties are left neglected, with damaged structures, overgrown areas and land that has not been cared for the way a rancher would care for it. Oklahoma authorities have conducted hundreds of raids on illegal grows in recent years, making this more than an isolated problem in rural communities.

As mentioned in my previous articles, we are also watching a different kind of outside demand enter rural America through data centers. Companies looking for enormous amounts of land, electricity and water can bring financial resources to a market that a local rancher simply cannot compete with. When someone can walk into a rural land market with millions of dollars behind them, it can change what an acre is worth very quickly.

That is what concerns me. A rancher is looking at a piece of ground and asking, Can I run cattle on this and make it work? Someone else may be looking at the same ground and asking, How much can this property make me? When those two people are competing for the same acre, the rancher does not always have a chance.

And when enough outside money enters a market, the price does not only affect the person buying that particular piece of ground. It can affect everyone who comes after them.

They Aren’t Making More Grass

Land is different from almost every other investment we make. You can make more money. You can build another business. You can buy another truck, another horse or another piece of equipment. You can find another investment somewhere else.

You cannot create another thousand acres of native prairie when the last thousand are gone.

Once agricultural land has been developed, fragmented or concentrated into ownership that makes it nearly impossible for the next generation to enter the industry, we cannot simply decide to reverse it when we realize what we have lost.

That is the part that scares me.

I do not want a future where ranching belongs only to the people who inherited enough land to begin with or accumulated enough wealth to buy everyone else out.

I want there to still be big ranches in America fifty years from now. I want families to keep their land. I want ranchers to be profitable. I want people who have worked their entire lives to have the opportunity to expand and make their operations stronger.

But I also want there to be room for somebody else.

Not Wanting Opportunity to Become an Inheritance

I want the young woman who grew up watching her father drag calves to someday have a pasture she can call her own. I want the young man who has spent ten years working for someone else to have the opportunity to build something of his own. I want the family who left the ranch for college or another career to be able to come home and find a way back into agriculture. I want there to be people who were not born into land but are willing to spend their lives earning the right to care for it.

Those people are not asking to be handed a ranch.

They are asking for a chance to work hard toward one.

I know how fortunate I am to have a family ranch that I can return to if I choose. I know there is a possibility that one day I could inherit a place that my family has spent generations building and caring for. That is not something I take lightly. It is one of the greatest privileges I could ever be given.

But I also know that not everyone gets that opportunity.

And if the only realistic way to become a landowner is to inherit land, then we are slowly turning ranching into an industry where opportunity itself is inherited.

That is not the future I want.

Stewardship Means More Than Ownership

Agriculture has never survived because one person owned everything. It survived because people relied on one another. Neighbors helped neighbors during branding. Families traded labor. Ranchers shared knowledge, equipment and water. They showed up when someone needed help because they understood that the strength of rural America was never found solely in the size of its ranches. It was found in the people who lived on them, worked them and passed that knowledge down.

I am all for growth. I am all for a rancher expanding an operation, buying a neighboring place when it makes sense and building something that can support the next generation. Growth can be a sign of hard work, good management and a genuine desire to leave something better than what you were given. But at what point does more growth become selfish? At what point does expansion stop being about strengthening an operation and start being about simply owning more? At what point does preserving a legacy become building a monument to yourself?

Those are not easy questions, and I do not think there is a single acreage number where the answer changes. Sometimes buying another ranch is exactly what is needed to keep a family operation together. Sometimes it prevents land from being divided into houses and protects the grass for another generation. But sometimes, I wonder if we have confused the ability to buy something with the need to buy it.

Maybe stewardship is not always about how much more we can acquire. Maybe it is asking whether our growth is helping agriculture as a whole or simply making the road into it harder for the person coming behind us. Maybe it is knowing that just because we can afford to buy the ranch next door does not necessarily mean we need to.

There is a certain humility in saying, I could buy it, but I don’t need it.

And perhaps that is a kind of stewardship we do not talk about enough.

Who Will Still Have a Place at the Gate?

Maybe that is the question we should be asking ourselves more often. Not simply how much more we can buy or how many more acres we can add, but what happens to the people coming behind us.

I know how lucky I am to have a family ranch to go back to if I choose to. I know that one day I may have the opportunity to inherit something my family has spent generations building, and I will never take that for granted. It is a privilege I did not create for myself, and one that carries its own responsibility. There are kids who grow up on ranches knowing their family’s land may one day be theirs, and there is something incredibly special about that kind of continuity. But there are just as many people who love this life who were not born into it, and they deserve to have a chance to work for and build something of their own, too.

I do not want ranching to become an industry where the opportunity to participate is something you either inherit or never have.

Someday, every one of us will leave the ground we spend our lives fighting for. The fences will belong to someone else. The cattle will belong to someone else. The trucks will rust. The gates will swing for another generation.

The only thing we really get to decide is what we leave behind.

So maybe the question is not simply, How much can I build?

Maybe it is, How much is enough?

Maybe it is, Who will have a chance after me?

And maybe the greatest measure of a rancher’s legacy is not the number of acres they managed to acquire, but whether there was still room at the gate for someone who came after them.