>Most Illinois farmland is not owned by farmers

it's not a new phenomenon, most people who bought the farm do not follow through and till that land...

ok ok, i'll stop. to people who are not native speakers of US English, "bought the farm" is a euphemism for dying https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buy_the_farm#English

from that link: "Etymology: Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use."