“Historically, people got land to farm through marriage or inheritance, but the new generation of farmers often don’t come from agricultural backgrounds,” says Jill Dohner, interim co-executive director of the Washtenaw County Conservation District and local program specialist for the new state program, MIFarmLink.
Dohner compares MIFarmLink to “a matchmaking service that connects farmland owners and seekers who would otherwise never meet.” According to the Conservation District, land access is the greatest barrier for beginning farmers; meanwhile most farmland owners lack a succession plan. MIFarmLink neatly solves the problem with an online tool that lets owners list their available properties and farmland seekers post their professional profiles.
“Conservation easements are a great way to permanently protect farmland, but the process is slow, expensive, and doesn’t guarantee that the land will actually be farmed,” Dohner says. “The best way to slow the rate of loss is to keep farmland in the hands of farmers.”
It worked for Fran Adler. She protected her historic eighty-seven-acre farm in Manchester with a conservation easement in 2012 and wanted to lease part of it to a farmer who shared her commitment to sustainable practices. After posting on MIFarmLink, she heard from a number of interested farmers and chose Alex Gama.
“To me, the property was a rare gem, and I had to jump on it immediately,” says Gama. He’d moved to Washtenaw in 2023 to start a sheep farm, but could only afford a relatively small parcel with a farmhouse for his young family.
“The issue is that land is just so expensive,” Gama says, especially with the “huge up-front cost of buying the breeding stock for the sheep.”
Adler’s rolling grassland was perfect for sheep. They’re starting with a one-year lease on fifty acres, and Gama hopes “to keep leasing the property long term and grow the business.” Adler, too, hopes it will blossom into a long relationship.
Two other farms in Washtenaw have been linked since the program launched last year, totaling 106 acres. Across the state, the program has helped to keep an additional 170 acres in cultivation and connected ninety-four farmers with information and a warm handoff to support services to help make their land transfers a success.
“It’s such a great concept,” Adler says. “This was a wonderful opportunity to hook up with people I would never have known about otherwise—and they wouldn’t have known about me either.”
This article has been edited since it was published in the June 2024 Ann Arbor Observer. The spelling of Fran Adler’s last name has been corrected.
