Laura Colligan is a Land Advocacy Fellow with Young Farmers and a first generation farmer at Dirt Rich Farm in Springville, New York.
There’s been a recent flurry of headlines about the skyrocketing price of farmland, but farmland affordability has been a problem long before the pandemic-era price spikes disrupted huge swaths of our economy. As a first generation farmer who started working on farms in 2012, I’ve had a front-row seat to the crisis, and as a Land Advocacy Fellow with the National Young Farmers Coalition, I now have the opportunity to examine this problem on a policy level.
For years, the price of farmland has been a major deterrence keeping the next generation of farmers from entering the profession. Meanwhile, the age of the American farmer continues its upward trajectory, with the average farmer at 57 years old as of 2017. I now own my own farm and my husband and I make a living from farming, but I believe my story illustrates why I am such an anomaly.
What does making a living in farming look like? My husband and I operate a Certified Organic vegetable farm and sell our produce directly to local consumers. We work more than full time from mid March or early April, when the snow melts, until sometime in November, when it gets snowy again. For months on end, we’re working more than 130 hours per week. For all that work, we made $35,000 in 2021, about as much as if one of us had worked 40 hours per week at a fast food restaurant.
We had all the help in the world getting to this point. After I finished my high school education, I spent three years interning on organic vegetable farms in Michigan, Vermont, and New York’s Hudson Valley. It was a way to learn how to farm without incurring any student debt. Then I returned to Western New York, where I grew up, to start my own farm. My parents let me grow vegetables on the two-thirds of an acre that was their side yard just outside of East Aurora, which was enough space for me to grow food for three dozen CSA (community-supported agriculture) members. I was also able to live with my parents rent-free for the first two years that I farmed.
To actually be able to make a living from farming, I needed more space, and after three years of looking, I bought five acres of vacant farm land near Springville, because land in the East Aurora area was out of my price range. My parents let me have the money in my unused college fund, along with a very modest inheritance my mother had received when her uncle died, to buy the land, a kit to put up a greenhouse, and a small house with a beautiful old barn nearby. My income and credit made me unable to qualify to borrow that kind of money from commercial lenders on my own, and I didn’t think I had enough farm management experience to qualify for a loan from the Farm Service Agency, so my dad cosigned on the mortgages for the farmland and house. Since relocating to the new land, our business has grown tremendously, and my husband and I were able to quit our off-farm jobs.
There are so many other young people who don’t come from farming families but would love to start a small farm of their own. Seventy-eight percent of respondents to the Young Farmers’ 2022 National Young Farmers Survey identify as first-generation farmers. I’ve met and worked with many over the past decade, but most of them never end up attempting to start a farm and leave the field of agriculture altogether after a few years. They weren’t less hard-working or less skilled farmers than I am. They simply weren’t as lucky to have the access to land and capital that I have had. The statistics back this up — sixty-seven percent of respondents in the National Young Farmer Survey who stopped farming said that finding affordable land to buy was a barrier that was very or extremely challenging, and access to capital was also cited as a major hurdle.
Access to affordable farmland was the top barrier facing all of the survey’s respondents, but the problem is particularly acute for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) farmers. Fifty-nine percent of overall respondents to Young Farmers’ survey said finding affordable land was very or extremely challenging, while sixty-five percent of BIPOC farmers named the same issue as very or extremely challenging.
It is important to understand the historical context. For generations, public policy has facilitated the dispossession of millions of acres from BIPOC farmers through policies such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Homestead Acts of the mid-1800s, the revocation of Field Order No. 15, and the Alien Land Laws of the early 1900s, among others. This means that a beginning farmer who is white is far more likely to have land access through their family. Even for those of us who don’t come from farming families, the racial wealth gap also makes it less likely that a BIPOC farmer would receive the same kind of help I received from my parents, even if they came from a family with a similar income level.
I joined the National Young Farmers Coalition’s Land Advocacy Fellowship along with 99 other farmers and ranchers from across the country because I believe you shouldn’t need to be a middle-class kid with an unused college fund to be able to start a successful farm. Half of the farmland in the United States is expected to change hands in the next two decades, but the disparity between the price of land and the amount that can be made from farming it has never been greater. If there is going to be a successful transition of land to the next generation of farmers, the 2023 Farm Bill is going to need to focus on affordable farmland access.
One step that could be taken in the next farm bill is to increase staff capacity at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to coordinate federal land access work and services to young farmers, including establishing a new office and coordinating position focused on equitable access to land. 67% of respondents in the National Young Farmer Survey who stopped farming said that finding affordable land to buy was a barrier that was very or extremely challenging. Meanwhile, only 13% of survey respondents used the Farm Ownership Loan from the Farm Service Agency, the branch of the USDA whose lower interest rate loans should help make farmland access more affordable. This new office could help bridge the gap between the obvious need for FSA services like the Farm Ownership Loan among young farmers and the low use rates.
Congress could act more directly to make FSA Direct Farm Ownership Loans more useful by developing a pre-approval and pre-qualification process. When I bought my farmland with a commercial lender, I could show the buyer that I was pre-qualified, but they still threatened to walk away partway through the process in hopes of getting a quicker cash sale. Someone hoping to buy a farm using an FSA loan has the disadvantage of trying to find a seller who will even accept their offer without any proof that they can actually get a loan.
As the current generation of farmers retires, our country needs young farmers and farmers of color to be able to take their place. The ideas I’ve presented are a starting point, but a number of ambitious programs are necessary to make this transition a reality. Every young farmer has a different story and different challenges, so I call Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, my Congressman, Representative Langworthy, and all Members of Congress to look to the expertise of their young farmer constituents as they draft the next Farm Bill. Whether urban, rural, or suburban, you can probably find us in your state or Congressional district.
The farm bill touches the lives of all of us, farmers and eaters alike, and all of our voices are important in calling on Congress to create a 2023 Farm Bill that supports young farmers. To get involved with the campaign and receive action alerts, sign up here: p2a.co/land.