The Hidden Work of Keeping Farmland in Farming

About this episode

This episode discusses the challenges and solutions related to farmland transitions as farmers retire, featuring insights from experts in farmland preservation.

There are about 2 million farms in the United States. Every year, a significant number of the farmers running them are approaching retirement age with no clear plan for what happens to their land when they're done. Farmland doesn't just disappear when a farmer retires. It gets sold, subdivided, converted, or absorbed into larger operations. And in a lot of cases, that means the end of a working farm, a community food source, and sometimes four generations of family work. In this episode, Dana sits down with Molly Johnston Heck and Olivia Fuller from American Farmland Trust's Farmland for a New Generation program, a New York State initiative that connects retiring farmers with the next generation of land stewards. Olivia isn't just a program staffer. She's a fourth-generation farmer who used AFT's own tools to navigate her family's transition out of dairy and into direct-to-consumer beef, pork, and sheep. She knows this story from the inside. They cover: What conservation easements actually do (and what they don't) The Farmland Protection Implementation Program and how it puts real money in a farmer's hands Preemptive purchase rights and why they matter in high-pressure real…

People in this episode

Host: Dana DiPrima

Guests: Molly Johnston Heck, Olivia Fuller

Topics covered

• farmland preservation
• farm transitions
• agriculture
• community food sources
• retirement planning for farmers
• land stewardship

Keywords

• farmland
• farmers
• retirement
• conservation easements
• land-linking
• agricultural transition
• community agriculture

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: American Farmland Trust

Places: United States, Hudson Valley, New York State

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