Land Transitions to Regenerative Vegetable Farming: Assessing Opportunities for Established Traditional Farms and Small Vegetable Growers

Abstract

Economic challenges facing farmers in the United States are well-documented. Among these are systematic overproduction and low crop prices, competition on a global scale, high costs related to industrialized farming inputs and fluctuating weather (Baines, 2017). The average age of all U.S. farmers in 2022 was 58.1, up 0.6 years from 2017, highlighting a trend towards aging of farmers (USDA, 2022). Despite financial challenges of farming, there are people interested in getting into the business of farming, both in the United States and abroad (de Wit et. al., 2019). While this set of new farmers may seem a ready-made solution to the question of who will take over farms of the future, there exists a multifaceted transition gap, characterized by barriers that prevent aging farmers from exiting farming, and barriers to new farmers that would enter the profession. The most severe barrier is lack of access to land (Shute, 2011). My research examined the mismatch between land held by traditional farms and land needed by new farmers, the economics of small-scale direct market vegetable farming, and proposed and analyzed a business model based on the success of farm incubators to address this mismatch while meeting economic needs of farmers. While a national issue, I focused on New England, where traditional farms are often on the scale of 50-100 acres, growing commodities such as hay. New direct market vegetable growers will typically only need a small plot of land on the order of one or a few acres. This project considered a hypothetical farm that shares features of an incubator farm as an organizational model and reviewed existing benchmark studies to understand the economics of small-scale direct market vegetable farming. The central research questions were: Is it economically feasible for a traditional land-owning farm producing a commodity such as hay, to repurpose a portion of land in production and lease it to individual vegetable farmers? Could this proposed model be economically viable for both parties, and could this help reduce the barriers to entry and increase longer term viability for new farmers? This project used scenario analysis to forecast financial feasibility of a model where an existing traditional farm transitions a portion of their land to individual growers, leasing the land and a set of farm related services. I generated a set of outcomes both for the participating individual growers and for the traditional farm that would participate in this multi-farm project. I assessed scenarios for the individual growers referencing published research data on costs and benefits of selling via different market channels. Scenarios for the traditional farm varied in the numbers of acres transitioned, as well as the number of individual vegetable growers to whom they would be leasing. Results showed that the proposed model is economically viable for individual growers when selling via direct market channels but would not be viable for vegetable growers selling via a wholesale market. Results also indicate that the model is marginally financially viable for the traditional landowning farm. This research may be of interest to traditional land-holding farms, and small growers that are considering alternative approaches to land use and to policy makers. The CBA from this project may also have value as a forecasting tool to new or existing incubators looking to plan financial roadmaps for their own organizations, or for a collective group of individual farmers looking to participate in a joint venture.