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

Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: technical assistance
• Farm Business Management: farm succession
• Sustainable Communities: quality of life

The primary goal of this project is to
better understand farm business exit and succession following
several years of heightened stress, including the ongoing climate
crisis. We will identify additional support needed by farmers who
want to continue farming and those who want to exit and transfer
to a farming successor. A secondary goal is to understand the
implications of ground leases, often used by non-profit farmland
owners to achieve twin goals of long-term farmland access and
affordability while also allowing farmers to build equity. As the
first generation of farmers using these leases begins to exit, we
want to better understand the education and guidance that
landowners and exiting and incoming farmers need to achieve
successful transfers. 

CISA and project partners will achieve
the first goal through interviews with 15 exiting farmers, with a
focus on farmers who are not retirement age, non-family
succession, and/or those who transitioned their farms to
employees. Interviews will be designed to elicit information
about the reasons for their farm exit decision and the successes
and challenges experienced in transferring their land or business
to another farmer. We will also ask farmers what additional
services or policies could have helped them to remain at their
farm business or to more easily or successfully transfer their
land or business to another farmer. 

We will identify lessons learned from
current ground lease transfers and negotiations and will create a
plan for educating current ground leaseholders, non-profit
landowners, and incoming farmers about these
leases.  

This project seeks to understand farm
success, farm exit, and farm succession factors in the current
moment to inform recommendations for policy and technical
support. This project will use farmer interviews to improve our
understanding of farm business exits, farm successions, and the
support farmers need to stay in farming and/or successfully
transfer their land and/or business to another
farmer. Specific objectives are: 

1. To understand farmers’ reasons for
   exiting their farm business in 2023-5, with a particular focus
   on those farmers who are not yet of retirement age, non-family
   succession, and/or those who successfully transitioned their
   farms to employees. 
2. To understand these farmers’
   successes and challenges in transferring their land or business
   to another farmer. 
3. To understand farmers’ opinions
   about services, support, or policies that could allow them to
   remain in farming or make successful farm succession
   easier. 
4. To improve the joint understanding
   of Massachusetts agricultural service providers, community
   farms, and farmer ground lease-holders of the impacts of ground
   lease arrangements on farm
   succession.