Building partnerships and support for a regional farm-link effort in southeastern Massachusetts

Building partnerships and support for a regional farm-link effort in southeastern Massachusetts

Summary

The agricultural community in Southeastern Massachusetts faces a loss of critical mass. Recent development pressures have led to the loss of so many farms that the regional farm infrastructure is eroding. To revitalize and sustain our community, we must enable new and second-generation producers to begin farming in our region through a “Farm-Link” effort.

SEMAP began envisioning such a program in the Fall of 2005, as part of an overall program assessment of our Technical Assistance offerings. From very preliminary research we were aware that many state-wide and Northeastern Land-Link programs offered valuable resources for our region. The New England Small Farm Institute, Land For Good’s effort to develop the Farm Planning Transfer Network of New England, and others were notable resources. However, we also felt that unique features of our area—extremely high listed land values, the prevalence of non-farming landowners, and the need for major changes in farm infrastructure between traditional commodities (dairy, cranberries) and new crops and models—meant that some issues are best addressed locally. Finally, we knew that we would need to bring together many partners to tie into these state and regional resources while addressing specific local challenges. We identified our region’s network of local town agricultural commissions (number 9 at the time of the proposal and now up to 12), local land trusts, and for-profit service providers as key partners in this effort.

SEMAP's SARE Sustainable Community Grant (CNE06-010) has allowed us to actively develop of this partnership and conduct collaborative research, planning, and fundraising for a Farm-Link effort. Our partnership-building effort under this proposal has so far included assembling an advisory committee, holding farmer focus groups to clarify local challenges, conducting research into innovative national and international land tenure/transfer models, creating an action plan for the program, and implementing fundraising to launch these efforts. Along the way, we gave our program a name: Farms Forever.

We are currently moving from planning to implementation stage, developing program offerings and resources through partnerships, while achieving our first fundraising successes for the program and continuing fundraising efforts.

Objectives/Performance Targets

For this section of the report, we have included our original project components/objectives, followed by a description of progress to date.

Our partnership-building effort under this proposal will include the following components:

1. Assemble an advisory committee for the project consisting of representatives from:

Local Town Agricultural Commissions**
Local Land Trusts
For-profit consultants
SEMAP
Other planning, development, or agricultural organizations.

PROGRESS TO DATE:

Our Advistory Committee for the Farms Forever program now consists of 7 individuals representing the following:

UMass Extension
First Pioneer Farm Credit
Dartmouth Agricultural Commission
Local beef farm
Rehoboth Agricultural Commission
Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources
SEMAP

We have not identified a land trust representative who was able to serve regaularly on the advisory committee, but we have requested input from and worked with representatives from several local land trusts including Trustees of Reservations, Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts, and Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust. We are currently developing joint meetings and grant proposals with some of these partners.

2. Assemble 2 focus groups to clarify local Farm-Link challenges and needs from the perspective of the ultimate target audience, consisting of:

Beginning farmers
Retiring farmers
Non-farming landowners.

PROGRESS TO DATE:

The focus groups were held all on one day, July 10, 2006, and were the most important and informative stage of our project. We were fortunate to be able to engage Kathy Ruhf of Land For Good as our faciliator, and she assisted us with planning the format of the groups, provided skilled facilitation, and transcribed thorough notes. SEMAP staff did not participate in the focus groups in order to encourage candid answers from participants about what they felt SEMAP could contribute through its program.

We originally planned 2 focus groups, one with beginning farmers and one with retiring farmers and non-farming landowners combined. However, we determined that these latter 2 groups had different needs and perspectives, so we changed our plan to holding 3 groups. In the end, after 2 last-minute cancellations, only 1 landowner was able to attend. However this individual interview proved very helpful for our planning process. The retiring and beginning farmer groups had 5 and 8 participants, respectively. All participants were extremely appreciative of the stipend provided and we thank SARE for supporting this compensation.

3. Inventory and seek information from state-wide and Northeast-wide programs and partners that can provide expertise and information, including:

New England Small Farm Institute
Land For Good / Farm Planning Transfer Network of New England
NY and VT Land-Link
American Farmland Trust
Growing New Farmers Project
Others as identified

PROGRESS TO DATE:

Progress on this component has proceeded in a fluid way and to some extent has been incorporated with the research component (below) and with the planning of other workshops and meetings that we have developed as part of partnership-building for and implementation of Farms Forever.

We've been especially fortunate to work very closely with Land For Good on this project and in planning for Farms Forever implementation stages. Their expertise and input have been invaluable. We also are pleased to be a focus area for LFG's own SARE grant, under which we will hold shortly hold a joint meeting on farm transfer planning tools and resources aimed at an audience of municipal and local planners and other regional community development groups.

In addition to the programs listed above, the following organizations have also provided input on and become partners in development of Farms Forever:

Trustees of Reservations
Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts
Bristol Conservation District
UMass Dartmouth Sustainability Initiative
Westport, Carver, and Middleboro AgComs

4. Conduct research to identify innovative national and international models of land tenure and land transfer that can be applied to our high real-estate value environment.

--a. Farm Retirement Scheme (European Union)

--b. Installment Purchase Agreement (Howard County, MD)

--c. Affirmative farming clauses in conservation easements (CA FarmLink).

PROGRESS TO DATE:

Combined with the contract for conducting the focus groups, we hired Kathy Ruhf of Land For Good to conduct this research overview. She developed a concise and thorough overview of farm-link research, programs, and policy initiatives and models (both national and international).

We have since received additional research assistance from UMass Dartmouth Political Science Department, in the form of initial research for a "primer" on legal issues relating to farmland transfer. They have conducted this work as part of their development process for a new sustainability studies major and minor at UMD, but have generously allowed us to review and utilize this information. We hope to work with them to continue work on and finalize this primer over the next several months.

Finally, very recently we have been put in contact with a UMass Dartmouth graduate student who is interested in developing an internship with SEMAP to work on the Farms Forever research aspect. She is particularly interested in examining models and resources for flexible lease and tenure agreements between landowners and entering producers, and in identifying regulator or policy options that would make it easier for new agricultural businesses to become established.

5. Develop an action plan for the full Farm-Link effort and set goals and outcomes that will be used to seek ongoing funding.

PROGRESS TO DATE:

We have developed our action plan in consulation with the advisory committee decribed above. The plan has so far been articulated in 3 main forms:
A Farms Forever "one pager" that we use to provide basic information about the program to community partners and potential funders.
A diagram showing program components and their inter-relationships, along with a projected timeline for implementation. (We will provide this document as part of our final report).
Our SARE Research and Education full proposal, which lays out this timelins and translates our action plan in to SARE's outcome format.

6. Implement a fundraising effort to establish the full Farm-Link effort. We are confident that developing a strong project team and a concrete action plan will greatly increase the project’s appeal to other funders.

PROGRESS TO DATE:

The fundraising effort for Farms Forever implementation is underway. We have already received our first implementation funding from the A.D. Makepeace Neighborhood Fund, as will be described in the Accomplishments section.

We submitted a SARE Research and Education pre-proposal for Farms Forever implementation and were invited to submit a full proposal, currently outstanding.

We also submitted a pre-proposal for Farms Forever implementation to the Northeast Center for Risk Management Education; this was accepted and the full proposal is due March 1.

**Town agricultural commissions are standing town committees comprising producers, established in 12 southeastern Massachusetts towns to date. This network of Agricultural Commissions provides a unique, producer-centered local outreach and communications network.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Again in this section, we will list the original milestones and our progress to date.

1. Advisory group is in place by April 30, 2006.

PROGRESS TO DATE: DONE

2. Advisory group includes at least 8 members, including 2 agricultural commission members (farmers), 2 land trust representatives, 2 representatives from for-profit service providers, 1 SEMAP representative, and 1 other member.

PROGRESS TO DATE: DONE, See Objectives section for specific membership.

3.Each focus group will include at least 6 members, evenly representing retiring farmers, beginning farmers, and non-farming landowners.

PROGRESS TO DATE: DONE, Focus groups held July 10, 2006. Details in Objectives section; transcribed notes will be submitted with final project report.

4. The action plan will be in place by July 2006.

PROGRESS TO DATE: DONE, action plan diagram/timeline and one-pager will be submitted with final project report.

5. Funding for the full Farm-Link effort, approximately $40,000 per year, will be in place by December 2006.

PROGRESS TO DATE:

We did not meet our goal of raising the full $40,000 goal for Farms Forever program implementation by December 2006. We raised $9,900 by that date. We currently have over $160,000 in grant propsals outstanding, including pre-proposals that have been asked to continue to full proposal stage. This fundraising effort is ongoing and is SEMAP's top priority in our Technical Assiastance program area this year.

6. Using this new funding, a Farm-Link coordinator will be hired and the full Farm-Link effort will be implemented by January 2007.

As noted above, we have not yet met this goal. However, working through the partnerships we have developed under this grant, we have developed a number of program offerings for Farms Forever that we feel will represent a substantive offering to the ag community in our region while we work to complete fundraising and hiring staff. These program aspects include:

Offering reduced-cost 1-on-1 farm transfer planning with the support of the A.D. Makepeace Neighborhood Fund and in partnership with Land For Good.
Co-hosting SE Mass meeting on farm succession planning aimed at municipal/regional planning agency audience (under Land For Good SARE Sustainable Community Grant)
Co-hosting the "Transferring the Farm" workshop in Southeastern Masschusetts in March 2007, in partnership with Land Link VT and the Farm Transfer Network of New England
Co-hosting the "Exploring the Small Farm Dream" workshop in Southeastern Massachusetts in May 2007, in partership with NESFI, the Mass. Department of Agricultural Resources, and Pilgrim RC&D.
Providing Southeastern Mass. service provider names to the Farm Transfer Network of New England and promoting this service in SE Mass.

To date, SARE support has allowed us to conduct a very thorough and complete planning process for Farms Forever that has incorporated the input and efforts of many partners, and generated many new partnerships for SEMAP. Our ongoing work on this effort has only increased our conviction that this program is urgently needed and wanted in our region. We are grateful for SARE's support of the effort to date and look forward to completing our planning process and moving to full implementation by our grant ending date of March 31, 2007.