Will hedge fund managers make good farmers?

In a recent article in the New York Times, Cash Crops With Dividends: Financiers Transforming Strawberries Into Securities, Alexandra Stevenson wrote about the hedge funds’ interest in farmland purchase. Hedge funds have already been eyeing farmland with purchases in...

Organic farming in Maryland– is the trend going up or down?

The 2012 Ag Census gives us a blurry vision of trends in organic production. National media has been reporting steady increases in consumer demand for organic. Are producers as excited about growing food organically? As reported by the National Sustainable Agriculture...

And does a tenant house go with that farm lease?

The tenant house may become a key to the future of agriculture in Maryland. Here are the reasons for my surprising conclusion. First, Maryland’s land preservation programs were first developed at a time when farmers needed more land and fewer workers. Successful...

For farm sales, no web page is like . . .no phone!

Those who know Ginger Myers know that she is engaging and knowledgeable, but no nonsense. At the Producer’s Digital Toolbox class in Prince Frederick on April 15th, she noted that farmers who sell a product directly to consumers really need a website, and that...

Saving Farming, not just farmland – Part 2

Last week, I wrote that I would be attending the 2014 Maryland Land Preservation Conference and I promised to write a followup as a result of the session. The trip gave me the opportunity to visit one of my favorite Maryland towns (Frederick) and to accept an...

Saving farming, not just farmland

On Friday, I will be speaking at the 2014 Maryland Land Conservation Conference. Preparing for the talk: Helping the Next Generation of Farmers Get Access to Farmland, I began to think about how we got to a place where beginning farmers need help getting started. When...