Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – The Illinois Farmers Bureau re-kindled it’s relationship with former bureau president Phillip Nelson.

Nelson, who spent ten years as the agency’s 14th president, was recently elected to be its 17th president. He says he was found to be a very good leader, so the community seems to be happy to have him back.

Some of the plans Nelson has for making changes are to help justify farm equipment prices, and cost of land.

“You got to justify machinery costs, which are enormous compared to when I went into farming,” said Nelson in an interview on the WTAX Morning Newswatch. “Its very difficult for a young farmer that wants to start out to buy land at over fifteen-thousand an ace, Contrast that when I came back to farm in the 80’s, we were struggling and I bought my first property at eleven-hundred fifty dollars per acre, and that same plot of land today is fifteen thousand dollars.”

With 96 percent of the farmland in Illinois being family owned, Nelson says “We have to some things to pass our farms on to the next generation. We have tried to amend the inheritance tax in Illinois. With these land values going up we’ve had the same tax that we’ve had for over 30 years. Its been changed at the federal level but if we don’t do something in Illinois, we are going to have to have people sell portions of their farms off just to pay taxes.”

In Nelson’s previous time as the Bureau’s President, he also had conversations with the U.S. Department of Justice and tried to get the costs and taxes of the essentials for farming to either be dropped or at least justified.