In my last post, I noted that we do not have enough young and beginning farmers to replace those who will retiring or otherwise changing control or ownership of their farms. In this post, I will cover why they have trouble getting access to land. It is ironic that...
Farming in the U.S. has gone through an incredible transformation in the last century, from highly diversified to highly specialized. Over that period, we’ve gone from 6.4 million farms to 2.1 million farms. Meanwhile, average farm size in the U.S. has increased...
Frederick County, Maryland is blessed with a pleasant climate and productive farmland soils. Frederick had 181,512 acres of farmland in 2012, according to USDA Ag census figures, the most farmland of any county in the state. The market value of agricultural products...
What would it be like to be a farm region without farmers? A friend of mine recently directed me to a Tedx YouTube video of this dynamic young farmer, Lindsey Lusher Shute, who happens to be the Executive Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition. In her...
It never has been easy to start a farm. Even those who were bequeathed a fully operational and successful farm had to know what they were doing, where to find the resources, which markets to pursue, etc. to survive the first few years of farm ownership. Today, many...
I have a relative who has ‘leased’ the farm to the same farmer for decades. In fact, there is no written lease. The agreement was a result of a handshake. Over that time, the fee per acre has not changed and the verbal agreement has been renewed every fall...
