Land Access Policy Incentives

  For us it's important to give a beginning farmer a chance, and not just make a big farmer bigger. It's really a joy to help someone get started.

-Farm owner participant in the Nebraska Beginning Farmer Tax Credit

Success for a New Generation of farmers and ranchers, including young, beginning and farmers of color, depends on their ability to secure suitable land to start and expand their operations. This is an emerging puzzle that the United States and numerous other countries have begun to address through policy incentives that facilitate the lease or sale of farmland to this New Generation of farmers.

Indiana University researchers, in collaboration with American Farmland Trust, are researching the inception, reach, effects, and potential of both state-level and federal Land Access Policy Incentives (LAPIs) on agricultural landowners and NewGen farmers/ranchers. This integrated research and extension project aims to support the implementation of these promising new tools and increase their adoption. This project is supported by grants and cooperative agreements with the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, and the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

Our research and extension explores the following questions:

  • What values are guiding the creation and passage of these programs and how do they work?
  • Who do LAPI programs help, what kinds of farms and farmers, on what scale?
  • How do they affect landowners’ and New Gen farmers’ interactions with each other and with the land?
  • What lessons can be learned about program design and what types of assistance are still needed? 

 

Our methods include:

  • Surveying and conducting follow-up interviews with beginning farmer and landowner participants in LAPI programs
  • Convening a national Community of Practice made up of LAPI program administrators
  • Conducting qualitative interviews with LAPI program creators and advocates
  • Surveying and running focus groups of non-participants
To learn more about this research and extension program and how to get involved, please contact Co-Project Director Julia Valliant (jdv@iu.edu).

Everybody dreams about passing the farm to the next generation. In our case, the next generation just isn’t directly related to us, and that’s just fine.

Nebraska Landowner, 2019