Learning from Farmers: Farm Transitions and Succession in the Mid-2020s

Our region of western Massachusetts has seen a high level of farm transitions in 2024, with an unusual number of fairly young farmers choosing not to operate their farm businesses next year. The exit strategies, succession status, and next steps of these farmers vary. We want to understand more about the factors driving their decisions, the help they received, or wish had been available, and how they did or did not pass their land or business to another farmer.  

The past several years have been challenging for farms for many reasons: the market, labor, and supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic; steeply rising input prices; and several years of weather extremes and resulting crop losses caused in part by climate change. Although these stressors are likely to be contributors to farm exits, we would like to test this hypothesis through detailed interviews with exiting and transitioning farmers. In addition, we will ask farmers about any technical assistance they received during their farm transition, and about whether additional assistance or other support could have improved the process or the outcomes, including the ability to successfully transfer the land or business to another farmer. We intend to conduct approximately 15 interviews with farmers, identify themes, and review those findings with our farmer partner, interviewed farmers, and project partners.  

This work will result in a summary of findings that includes: 

• Themes driving farmer exit or transition; 
• Farm succession outcomes, including case studies; 
• Technical assistance and other support received, and additional support farmers wish had been available to them; 
• Recommendations for support that would help farmers remain in business or successfully transfer their land and/or business to another farmer, as desired 

A second, smaller component of this project is focused on farm transitions that involve ground lease agreements. These leases are intended to provide secure tenure to farmers, give farmers an opportunity to build equity through investments in farm buildings and infrastructure, and assure continued affordability for farm successors (See Equity Trust’s Agricultural Ground Lease and Commentary on Ground Lease). These leases are in use on several farms owned by non-profits in our region. We are seeing the first successions on these farms and recognizing that the leases add complexity. A successful transition involves at least three parties: the landowner, often a small non-profit, the exiting farmer, and a new farmer. Other parties—such as lenders—play important roles. All parties need to understand the lease and its impacts in order to ensure a smooth transition.  

Farm succession is key to the on-going success of the ground lease model. We want to learn from these early succession experiences and use this learning to educate current and future landowners and farmers using this model to foster smooth and successful transitions. Project partners Land for Good and Equity Trust were instrumental in developing these lease models and have been engaged in the creation of each local iteration. CISA has sometimes supported their work with individual farmers, including in a current farm transition and in current lease negotiations on a different farm.  

This portion of the project will result in improved knowledge and understanding of how to navigate ground lease succession. Because of the small number of cases and challenges maintaining confidentiality, it may be difficult to write up these lessons for a public audience. We will share lessons learned with key stakeholders: the farmers and non-profit landowners using this model in our region. In addition, increasing the knowledge of the project partners could have a region- and even nation-wide impact: Land for Good supports land access and tenure arrangements across New England, and Equity Trust works nationwide on community- and farmer-focused land tenure, particularly focusing on ground leases through their Farms for Farmers program.  

This project is focused on understanding the reasons that some of our most successful farmers are leaving agriculture, often before retirement age, whether and how they transition their land or businesses to other farmers, and what support they received or did not receive in making these shifts. These topics are critical to the future of agriculture in our region at a time when farmers face big challenges. In 2023, farmers and their supporters in Massachusetts advocated successfully for an impressive statewide response to weather disasters, including two funds that distributed more than $23 million to affected farmers before the end of the year. Our policy makers are committed to supporting agriculture for the long term and are responsive to our suggestions. If we understand what support farmers need to keep farming, or to pass their farms to new farmers, we will be better positioned to put those strategies and programs into place.  

This information also serves important equity goals. The 2022 Census of Agriculture confirms that in region, 95.8% of producers are white, and only 4.4% of producers are people of color. The ground lease model is one important tool for expanding land access. Optimizing this model for succession, therefore, could have important equity benefits. Similarly, any farm business transition can offer an opportunity to increase farm and farmland ownership and access for a person of color or member of another underserved group. Transitions offer an opportunity to expand who is a Massachusetts producer, but achieving this expansion may require more and different types of support than are currently offered.  

NESARE’s outcome statement focuses on the interconnections between people, land, water, and living beings. These connections require care and attention, but people are often less able to provide care to other beings when they are stressed. Specifically, farmers who are concerned about their economic survival feel less able to care for land and workers through methods such as adequate pay, safe working conditions, and environmentally sound growing methods. The long-term goal of this project is to implement technical assistance and other support that allows farms to remain in farming and/or to successfully transition their land or business to another farmer, which we believe will lead to “improvement of quality of life for farmers, their families, employees, and the farming community.”