Service Provider Succession Planning Programs To Address Land Access In The Northeast

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Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: focus group, study circle, technical assistance
• Farm Business Management: farm succession, feasibility study, land access
• Sustainable Communities: community development, community planning, community services, employment opportunities, ethnic differences/cultural and demographic change, local and regional food systems, other, partnerships, public policy, quality of life, sustainability measures, urban/rural integration

The service providers that will benefit from this project are in the sectors of farm/land/conservation, law, real estate, non-profits and land trust. The service providers in each of these sectors benefit by connecting more farmers and land stewards to land that might otherwise be sold to large scale development interests, thereby meeting their goals towards continued agricultural sustainability.  Several service providing organizations within the sectors of farm/land/conservation, law, real estate, non-profits and land trust have already expressed interest in sharing new strategies and skills to mitigate farm/land disparities along the lines of race and class in the northeast and are beginning to acquire new skills to help the growing number aging farmers transition land in ways that promote future sustainability.

Service providers will gain skills and tools to better facilitate land successions and transitions for and to land stewards who are people of color. The service providers will develop greater awareness of land based inequities and methods key individuals, organizations are taking to utilize their agency and power to address the issues. The trainers of the trainers (service providers) have a proven track record of initiating intentional land access, transfer and land back projects. The process of intentional land succession and transfers requires adaptable methodologies and this proved to be true throughout the project. With the added pressures of climate change, disastrous floods and a shifting political landscape, flexibility in methodologies and approaches to facilitate the clients/farmers succession or transfer processes for intentional land transfers and access in the Northeast prove both challenging and essential.

15 service providers will conduct educational succession planning programs that teach new strategies to a. 15 aging Farmers b. 30 Farmers of Color in the Northeast c. 15 additional service providers servicing the MA, CT, RI, VT region.

i. These educational programs will equip aging farmers with the new strategies and the skills to succession plan with greater confidence, meet and engage potential farm successors, receive economic benefits from the transfer and ensure diversified farming as a sustainability measure through their successors. ii. Farmers of Color will be equipped with new strategies and skills to meet and engage farmers looking to transition land, actively engage in negotiations during the succession process and gain the skills to finalize the succession process and uplift diversified agricultural practices as sustainability measures on the land. iii. 15 Service providers will adopt acquired skills and resources to complete succession plans and "close the deal" in ways that are mutually beneficial. 15 Farmers will show a willingness to engage these new strategies. 5-7 successions of farmland in the Northeast to Farmers of Color will occur within the period of this 3 year project.