Farming’s Next Generation Seeking Room To Grow
July 22, 2016 Land these days doesn’t come cheap. As costs continue to escalate, many young growers getting their start in agriculture are having to face the stark reality of acquiring land in a highly competitive real estate environment.
Holly Rippon-Butler
Luckily, there are resources available to beginning growers to make the purchasing process a little easier. For example, Holly Rippon-Butler, Land Access Campaign Manager at the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), has made it her mission to help growers navigate the agricultural real estate maze by connecting them with land trust partnerships that can facilitate the buying process.
Working With Land Trusts: What Are They?
Land trusts are non-profit organizations often started by community members, which are dedicated to protecting natural resources, according to NYFC’s website. Agricultural land trusts are focused on keeping farmland free from development and available for agricultural use.
Land trusts typically protect agricultural land by purchasing the property in full and leasing it to a farmer or managing it, or by holding a conservation easement on the land. Conservation easements are legally binding documents in which a landowner sells or donates a portion of his or her property rights to the land trust, extinguishing those rights.
Although NYFC is connected to other resources to help growers secure farmland, land trusts are the coalition’s primary focus, according to Rippon-Butler.
“We have chosen to focus on land trusts because we believe that it is critically important for farmers to own the land they’re farming on or have the ability to build equity on that land if they want to grow and maintain a viable farm business,” she explains.
Are Land Trusts A Good Fit For You?
To determine whether working with a land trust is right for your business, Rippon-Butler suggests evaluating a series of criteria.
The first step in this process is to make sure there is a land trust available in your area. By conducting a search on sites such as Findalandtrust.org, you can narrow down the results in your area and begin researching which land trusts might be a good fit.
So what should you look for in a land trust?
“First, take a look at the land trust’s website and read its mission statement,” Rippon-Butler says. “If it says in the mission statement that they’re only concerned with wildlife conservation, or maybe very narrowly focused on a geographic area, they might not be thinking about conserving farmland and keeping working farms on that land.”
Furthermore, not all land trusts may have the capital to work with every grower’s needs, so it’s important to have a conversation with the trust to assess whether or not they can serve you at your current scale.
Understanding that a land trust is a binding legal document is critical, Rippon-Butler says.
“Make sure you’ve partnered with a lawyer at some point, and make sure you’re being looked out for within the legal document.”
For more detailed information on the benefits of agricultural land trusts and conservation easements, refer to NYFC’s “Finding Farmland: A Farmer’s Guide To Working With Land Trusts.”
Buying Decisions
Regardless of whether you plan to work with a land trust, there are certain questions to ask before deciding if purchasing land is right for you. The first question, according to Rippon-Butler, is: Can you actually afford the land you’re looking to buy?
“Oftentimes, you get into a position where you’re looking for land and it feels impossible to find, so it can be really tempting to want to buy as soon as you find a property that works for you,” she says.
“It’s really important to ask, ‘Can I afford that?’ Maybe you can take out enough loans to buy it, but is the business you will be able to support on that property going to be profitable enough to pay back those loans?”
If you do decide to buy, the next question to ask is if the resources on that land are a good fit for your business.
For example, Rippon-Butler suggests addressing the following concerns:
- How is the soil quality?
- Are there water rights on the land?
- Is there enough acreage if the business grows?
- Is there land nearby you can potentially add on to your business if it does grow?
- Does the area suit the needs of your personal lifestyle if you plan to live close to your business?
Other Available Resources
In addition to land trusts, several innovative projects and resources aimed at helping you achieve your goals of land ownership have been developed in recent years. Highlighted below are several key efforts:
- Agrarian Land Trust: Based in California, the Agrarian Land Trust aims to develop assistance networks of farmers, planners, and investors to scale up the rate of farmland succession from one generation to the next through public advocacy campaigns and by working directly with stakeholders and service providers. More information can be found at Agrariantrust.org.
- Incubator Farms: A fairly new trend in the U.S., incubator farms are essentially a space where new farmers are given temporary, exclusive, and affordable access to land, capital, as well as farm business planning and support. In this setup, farmers typically pay an annual participant fee in exchange for the access to land, equipment, and other technical assistance.
- Farms For Farmers: This program was developed by Equity Trust, an organization with the mission of promoting equity by changing the way people think about and hold property, according to its website. The program aims to encourage the exploration of alternative approaches to the ownership of land through assisting land trusts, providing counseling to growers, delivering workshops and presentations on farm ownership, and by developing funding strategies.
- National Farmer And Rancher Linking Programs: There are a number of these programs available at the national or state level, which allow new farmers to connect with retiring farmers to set up a mutually beneficial arrangement to land transfer and ownership. A list of farm linking programs can be found on the Center For Rural Affairs’ website.
As mentioned earlier, even with all of these resources, Rippon-Butler stresses the importance of evaluating whether land purchase is the right move for you.
“If it’s your very first year of farming ever, I might recommend an apprenticeship, or leasing to own property before ownership — there are a lot of elements to be considered.”