Progress report for FNE25-122
Project Information
Objective 1a. Explore New York farmer attitudes towards farm succession through interviews
We will conduct 12 interviews on the issue of farm succession. All interviews will take place in the first 3 months of this project.
Interviews will result in 2 relevant surveys on the topic of farm succession in month 4 of this project.
- This project got of to a later start than planned, as our farm workers stayed longer than planned due to hurricane Melissa in Jamaica (Oct., 2025), requiring worker management longer than anticipated. To date principal interviewed 2 farmers, the NYS Commissioner of Agriculture, and the Schoharie County Agricultural Development Officer. It has been difficult to identify farmers for interviews both in the aging and young farmer group: not everyone is actively thinking about succession, or to take over an agricultural enterprise. Principal has identified a promising resource in New York State that committed to creating connections with interviewees.
- Interviews are a prerequisite to develop the surveys. Survey development is pending.
Objective 1b. Explore New York farmer attitudes towards farm succession through electronic surveys to identify most important barriers
This project aims to identify farm succession barriers both from the perspective of the aging farmers, as well as the beginning farmers through electronic surveys data collection and analysis of this data in months 5-6.
The goal is to receive 100 completed surveys from NYS aging farmers, and 100 completed surveys from beginning (successor) farmers, reached through the networks of the project collaborators.
Analysis of the survey results will identify and rank the most important barriers towards farm succession in the surveyed group.
- Not yet started (as per timeline).
Objective 2: Resolve five of the most important barriers in farm succession as identified by the New York farming community in the surveys, through literature research and stakeholder interviews.
Based on the year 1 survey outcomes, the project leader will do literature research on the 5 most important barriers to farm succession as identified by the farmers.
The objective of the research on each of the 5 topics will be to come to solutions, based on previous research, or established best practices.
To verify the feasibility of solutions found, the project leader will interview 5 stakeholders for each of the researched topics.
This literature research and stakeholder interviews will take place in year 2 of this project.
- Not yet started (as per timeline)
Objective 3: Create farmer-to-farmer recommendations for best practices towards farm transition based on the 5 identified barriers, and possible solutions.
- Not yet started (as per timeline)
Objective 4: Provide farmer-to-farmer education to create awareness of the importance of creating farm succession plans through interviews, surveys, and conference workshops in project years 1, 2, and 3.
The project leader will commit to 3 workshops in each of the project years with assistance of the technical advisors, and project collaborators in a farmer-to-farmer format, with the objective to raise awareness of the importance of planning for farm succession. The project goal is to reach at least 400 farmers through interviews, surveys, and workshops.
- Principal scheduled two exploratory workshops for early 2026. The first workshop will be in collaboration with SUNY Cobleskill, Institute for Rural Vitatlity (2/10/26), in a farmer-to-farmer format. The second workshop will be in collaboration with Liz Higgins, ENYCHP, in March, 2026.
The farm owner community is aging rapidly. According to the US Agricultural Census, in 2017, 56% of the New York State producers was over 55 years old. By 2022, that percentage grew to 60% (Ag Census, 2022). Generating retirement income for farmers is not easy, as many have tied up income in farm capital improvements. As a result, farmers have low social security savings, and likely will need supplemental income to retire with dignity.
After the day-to-day farm operation, little time is left for farmers to think about complex issues that come with farm succession. Without an apparent heir/family member successor, this lack of attention sets the farm up for an outright sale to highest bidder when time comes that the farmer cannot longer operate the farm. Those sales are not necessarily within the farming community, and could result in loss of viable farm land.
With planning however, aging farmers could monetize not only the farm, their infrastructure, and equipment, but also their business and goodwill. Continuing the farming operation with a successor could provide aging farmer with continuous source of supplemental retirement income, while also generating income and farm equity for the succeeding party.
Beginning farmers (non-land owners) may have the desire to make farming their career, but may not have the means to buy a working farm outright (land, equipment, livestock, farm infrastructure, goodwill, markets). As non-land owners, this group will not always able to build equity in a farming operation. Being a party in a farm succession could benefit this group by building equity in a successful farming operation.
In the period 1988-2024, we identified 7 SARE funded projects related to farm succession, all of them started after 2019. With the aging farmer community, this issue of succession very important. The most important message from al SARE project proposals related to farm succession: any effort to encourage farmers to start thinking about succession benefits the agricultural community.
This farmer-to-farmer project proposes to create awareness of the urgency and complexities of farm succession, for aging farmers, beginning (non-landowner) farmers, and agricultural planners. Awareness will be created through farmer and beginner farmer interviews, and surveys. In addition, awareness will be created through three annual series of workshops, based on the survey results (year 1), survey result guided literature research results and stakeholder interviews (year 2), and recommendations forthcoming combining the survey results with the literature research results (year 3).
This project will address issues of the continuity of local agriculture and related infrastructure, the transfer of farm equity between parties involved in the succession, and the issue of farm related income for both the incoming party, as well for the aging farmer party, creating a better quality of life for both.
Cooperators
- - Technical Advisor
- - Technical Advisor
- (Educator)
- - Technical Advisor
Research
Principal met in March with technical advisors (TA) from the Institute for Rural Vitality (IRV) at SUNY Cobleskill to discuss project, set expectations, and timeline. TA would like emphasis on non-heir /family member farm succession for this project.
As PSU (Carla Snyder) has been working on farm succession research (primarily in PA, WV, VA, MD), I talked with her in September to learn about her findings from a recent farm survey (961 responses total). I was hoping to be able to use the survey PSU developed as a starting point for the surveys to develop in this project, but due to software glitches this was not an option.
Principal contacted two collaborators for this project for help identifying possible farmers for interviews. One collaborator provided me with a list of possible interviewees (November, 2025). However, it has been complicated to more precisely define the group of aging and young farmers most appropriate to interview for this project.
I developed three lists of questions relevant to this project for the NYS Commissioner of Agriculture, the Schoharie County Ag development agent, and the aging farmers. I met with the TA (IRV) on December 9 to discuss progress on the project, and the question lists.
On December 11, I interviewed Commissioner Ball at the NYS Department of Ag and Markets.
On December 16, I interviewed the Schoharie County Agricultural Development Specialist.
Also in December, in interviewed two aging farmers (one with identified successors, one without identified successors). Both are in commercial horticulture.
As noted earlier, defining the farmers appropriate to interview for this project has been a challenge. Eileen Randolph (New York Farm Viability Institute, NYFVI) pointed out the Beginning Farmer Grant Program program the administered and analyzed (https://nyfvi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/BFCG-R1-RecapFINAL.pdf). Successful beginning farmer applicants to this program had 5-7 years of farm experience - possibly this would also be a good metric for defining the beginning farmer group to be interviewed. In addition, if they self-identify as currently looking for a farm, their insights would help to develop the broader 'young farmer' survey.
To be expected, the NYS Aging farmer group is large and equally diverse. From the pilot interviews, it would be in the interest of this project to target aging farmers who are still actively farming, and are currently looking for a successor, but have not identified this successor within their family.
One of the interviewees suggested the American Farm Land Trust (AFT) "Farmland for a New Generation" program (https://nyfarmlandfinder.org/ ). This program solicits aging farmers looking for a farm transfer, and younger farmers looking for land to list themselves in a searchable database. The principal connected with Alexandra Morency of AFT. She is able to search the database for farmers that would fit the interviewee definitions listed above, and create leads for this project.
From the pilot interviews with aging farmers: There appears to be a significant difference between planning for succession with identified successors (family members), or planning for succession without an identified successor.
Having clearly defined goals for a succession plan appears to make it relatively easier to execute that plan.
A long farm transition timeline appears to be beneficial in a farm succession situation.
In NYS there are numerous initiatives to help beginning farmers. There are also resources available to assist farmers with a desire to transition their farm.
Project in progress.
Education & outreach activities and participation summary
Participation summary:
According to the project proposal timeline, outreach takes place later in years 1, 2, and 3. All outreach will take place after the due date of this initial progress report (1/15/26).