Creating a Framework to Facilitate Land Management Relationships Between Non-Operating Landowners and Beginning Producers

Commodities

Practices

The result of “Creating a framework to facilitate land management relationships between non-operating landowners and beginning producers” will be the development of educational tools and materials that support land link program coordinators who are working to catalyze and sustain relationships between non-operator landowners (NOLs) and beginning producers seeking access to agricultural land in Kansas.

 With the number of NOLs on the rise, there is opportunity to meet the land access needs of beginning farmers and ranchers while potentially increasing the implementation of regenerative agricultural practices on Kansas landscapes. Cultivating land management relationships between these two parties and building new succession models requires evaluation of current land link programs in the United States. The primary methods will be 1) interviews with current land link coordinators, individuals who have experienced land transitions with varying levels of success, and beginning producers; 2) literature review; and 3) data synthesis research into the interests and motivations of NOLs. These sources will be combined to create usable facilitation guides, multimedia case studies, and outreach materials to develop and sustain successional networks between these groups of interest.

Learning outcome (1): land link coordinators gain greater comprehensive understanding of the successes and limitations of current land link program models, which contributes to the action outcome of creating tools that incorporate these successes and address limitations in the cultivation of sustained land transition relationships between NOLs and beginner producers. 

Learning outcome (2): deepened awareness among land link coordinators of beginner producers’ interests, needs, and motivations in land transition relationships, which leads to the action outcome of improved advocacy for and increased participation of beginner producers in land link partnerships, and higher success rate of facilitated relationships. 

Learning outcome (3): new knowledge of NOLs’ interests, motivations, and information sources among agricultural researchers and land link coordinators, which leads to the action outcome of educational and informational materials targeted toward NOLs to increase their interest in regenerative agriculture practices on their properties and their participation in land link programming.