A resilient food system depends on farmers’ ability to access and retain farmland. However, American farmland is disappearing at an astronomical rate, while farmers are being priced out by investor-backed land developers or corporate farms. Many suggest that land access is the single largest barrier for beginning farmers.
The Farmland Access Legal Toolkit provides land-seekers, farmers, landowners, and technical assistance providers with educational information and tools to navigate the legal and affordability issues that arise when leasing, purchasing, transferring, and retaining land.
The toolkit also includes a growing collection of resources for heirs’ property owners, who are vulnerable to losing land passed through inheritance without a will or estate planning strategy. To help combat this trend, the Farmland Access Legal Toolkit publishes state-by-state heirs’ property fact sheets and catalogs insights from heirs’ property owners who have engaged in innovative arrangements to preserve family land.
