Jane Kaminski is a Land Advocacy Fellow with the National Young Farmers Coalition and a farmer and co-owner/operator of John-Paul’s Farm in East Wheatfield Township, Indiana County, Pennsylvania. This op-ed was first published Lancaster Farming in January 2024.
Recently, I drove past a sign that said, “Farmland For Sale, Mini Mall Development Opportunity.” I wanted to turn around and see that sign again, take a picture of it, but the reality was that I had already taken a wrong turn — I was about an hour away from my farm, trying to navigate to someone else’s, on my way to pick up a second-hand, two-bottom plow from a “retired” farmer.
That sign felt like a gut-punch. Maybe it would have for you, too.
Sometimes a farmer needs, or wants, to sell their farm, but a mini-mall is hardly the dream we have for the next generation…right?
I’m a younger farmer, 34 years old, and a beginning farmer. I’m the president of the Indiana County Farmers’ Market and a co-owner of John-Paul’s Farm, where we produce vegetables, eggs and small grains for local sale.
I might be a young farmer, but here in Indiana County, and across Pennsylvania, farmers are aging. We’re reaching a point where many farmer-landowners will be transitioning their land, planned or unplanned. At the same time, young farmers and BIPOC farmers are faced with a lack of access to affordable land.
I have experienced the overwhelming anxiety around, not land-loss, but, the potential for land loss. My husband and I know this firsthand as we’ve lived in a stressful limbo for years waiting for large debts to be figured out after the passing of a loved one who was the family landowner. We were grieving while considering what resources we did or did not have available to possibly “save” the family farm.
Meanwhile, so much of the saving we wanted to do was actually putting our resources into cultivation. And how were we to invest in equipment, cultivation and upkeep when we could soon be completely uprooted?
After a years-long process of addressing family debts, the farm we reside on is now co-owned by family members of multiple generations, including my spouse. We found land stability, and are now actively working toward achieving goals set forth in our business plan, and learning a lot along the way.
A big part of achieving our goals has involved equipment and infrastructure acquisition so that we can efficiently expand cultivation, and make enough profit to reinvest in our farming business. We’ve gone the route of purchasing used equipment, pieces that are sometimes twice or three times my age, because of their affordability, durability and repairability.
When I went to pick up that two-bottom plow, the “retired” farmer, who was busy working on a piece of equipment when I arrived, complimented me for being a hard worker as I helped load the plow into my truck.
I have many elder farmers to thank for my equipment — Mr. Bob for my Hayliner 271, Mr. Bryan for the Farmall 400, and Mr. Darrel for the International 30 Combine — and numerous other elders from whom I’ve acquired cultivators and more, and the complementary tours I’ve received of their family farms. But the only reason I am in a position to acquire and use this equipment, and be a hard worker, is because I have secure access to land.
As a country, we’ve fallen behind in keeping up with the need to engage youth and young adults in agriculture. I’m not trying to discredit all of the great efforts readers of this article have made, whether it be volunteering with a youth agriculture program or raising children on the family farm — you have made a positive impact. But, I am saying that many have been left behind, and we’re reaching a critical point in American agriculture where we need to act thoughtfully yet swiftly.
We have the opportunity to uplift those who have faced discrimination in agriculture, those whose family land has been lost or stolen, and those who never got the chance to learn that farming is actually a wonderful career opportunity.
The Land Access, Securities, and Opportunities Act (LASO) is an impactful piece of legislation that we can ask our congresspeople and senators to support as the new Farm Bill is being written.
The LASO Act provides funding for direct assistance and services to help farmers and ranchers afford and acquire land, cover closing costs and down payments, secure clear title on heirs’ property farmland, capitalize infrastructure and site improvements, acquire business technical assistance and farm viability training, and other activities.
Lack of secure land tenure, including the lack of access to land in the first place, is a crisis faced by the next generation of American farmers. According to the National Young Farmers Coalition, even those who grew up in farming are now facing land access issues.
I don’t want families to face what ours did, and I hope for government programs that can help us avert a full-on crisis in which land is even more consolidated, and the small family farm and the local food system both become relics.
The LASO Act will serve us and the next generation well.