BFRDP Projects

Access to Land for New England`s Beginning Farmers: Phase 2
[Final Report]

Award Amount: $641,222
Grant Program: 2015 Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program Awards
Project Director: Kathy Ruhf
Email: kathy@landforgood.org
Organization: Land For Good

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  • Overview
  • Results
  • Materials
  • Delivery Area
  • Comments

Project Overview

Access to land is one of the biggest challenges for beginning farmers (BF) in New England. In this project, Land For Good, its partners and 40 collaborators enabled over 2,800 BFs to access land or improve their tenure situation in six New England states. Our goals were to: improve BFs’ readiness to successfully access land to farm; enable effective farm succession and transfer to BFs; improve how BFs find and evaluate farm properties and connect with landowners; educate professionals and BFs about innovative approaches and methods; and strengthen programs that help BFs access land and improve the conditions for farmland access in New England and nationally.

Through coordinated teams and task forces, we developed a curriculum for our 3-session Succession School conducted in six states for 18 farms. We launched an innovative online Build-a-Lease tool and updated our 8-module online Acquiring Your Farm course. We produced a comprehensive Farm Access Guide and decision tool explaining and comparing land tenure methods. We produced a land access guide for commercial urban farming, a farm property posting guide, a Farm Succession School instructors’ manual, 11 fact sheets, and a blog report on affordable farmer housing.

We conducted 46 land access and transfer workshops for 2,536 trainees, and a 2-day cross-discipline succession professional training for attorneys and other advisers. LFG provided direct “coaching” to 887 farm seekers, landowners and transitioning farmers.

We improved the region's farm link programs, revamped our regional online New England Farmland Finder Farm Transfer Network of New England websites. We held three project convenings for over 40 collaborators. In cooperation with USDA, we held a national conference in June 2017 for 220 service providers, agency personnel and advocates from 40 states. A conference report summarizes collected policy and program suggestions for all regions. 

Number of Participants: 4752

Results

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