Forging ways to access land for BIPOC farmers in Georgia

“The biggest problem is finding land and I didn’t know where to go to farm even though I was qualified,” says Deijhon Yearby. The 26-year-old began his farming journey in high school and now grows okra, tomatoes, kale and other Southern favorites on a 1-acre lot in Nicholson, Georgia.

“I was part of the Young Urban Farmers Program where they took high school kids and showed them farming techniques,” Yearby explains. In 2019 he was connected to farmland through an online platform called Georgia FarmLink and was able to start his Cozy Bear Market Gardens operation soon after.

Yearby was the first Georgia farmer to be brought together through the Georgia FarmLink web tool, launched by the Athens Land Trust (ALT) in 2019 to help novice and disadvantaged farmers access farmland. The site connects farm seekers and landowners/donors, allowing them to meet independently while still having access to ALT’s resources and technical support.

“FarmLink allows farm owners who want to help break down the barriers for new farmers to be creative in the process.”

Online land access platforms exist in a number of states including Washington, Oregon and New Jersey and can be incredibly helpful for new farmers. In the United States, increasing urban sprawl and rapid economic development continue to consume farmland: from 2020 to 2021, the country lost 1.3 million acres, a shift that drove up the price of remaining farmland.

As of 2022, the average rent for irrigated farmland in Georgia was $221 per acre and $74 per acre for non-irrigated farmland. The average cost of buying an acre of farmland in Georgia is about $3,900. Finding enough capital to rent, let alone buy, farmland is a huge hurdle for new farmers, and they may not have the tools to absorb the risk or overhead of scaling.

“FarmLink allows farm owners who want to help break down the barriers for new farmers to be creative,” says Johanna Willingham, who manages Georgia FarmLink on behalf of ALT. Since the onset of the pandemic and the ensuing global food crisis, Willingham has noted that farm donors are increasingly offering unconventional leasehold models to meet new farmers halfway. “Some agricultural donors don’t charge rent and utilities, and only charge 5 percent gross,” she says. “Some say, ‘Just pay the utilities.'”

Although efforts stalled early in the pandemic, the platform soon picked up momentum and saw an overall increase in the number of farmers looking for land: as of 2021, the Georgia FarmLink program has more than 3,100 participants. These new entrants include growers trying to connect directly with landowners and others seeking ALT’s help to facilitate a match. But even with an increase in new donors, there are still more farmland seekers than donors.

“We have about a thousand farmers looking for land and about 20 sites from land donors,” says Willingham. “Many landowners only think about the transition plan at the end of their lives or farming careers.”

To address this imbalance, ALT has launched an incubator program that prioritizes people from historically underrepresented groups in Athens to support budding farmers preparing to connect to land. ALT is also working to establish more connections with land donors and conduct estate planning programs.

Jean Young, Deijhon Yearby and Johanna Willingham at Williams Farm, a small urban farm anchoring the Williams Farm Incubator Program. (Image credit: Oisakhose Aghomo)

While access to land is crucial, there are also additional tools that can help novices navigate the complex and confusing legal processes involved in acquiring and managing land. This is especially important for farmers from diverse backgrounds in an industry that is 95 percent white and 64 percent male. The agribusiness also has a history of discriminatory practices in accessing resources and support, often made possible by the injustices exacerbated by property rights.

Launched in 2018 by the Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, the Farmland Access Legal Toolkit (FALT) is one such tool.

“The toolkit is a bridge, designed to give ordinary people the information they need to resolve their property issues before they go to an attorney,” says Francine Miller, a senior attorney at Vermont Law who curates FALT.

Since the beginning of 2021, 45,000 people have accessed the toolkit. Many are in the South, particularly in Georgia, Texas, Florida and Virginia, and nearly half are 25 to 44 years old. Ensuring that users can navigate these tools with little to no effort is paramount. The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems is constantly working to pinpoint access challenges and gain a better understanding of its users’ needs.

“We’ve created Spanish-language resources, we’ve made our toolkit accessible via mobile phones, and we’re also working on distributing PDFs of the toolkit,” says Miller. “If someone calls and says, ‘Hey, we need this toolkit for our farmers in outlying areas of Wisconsin,’ we send out the PDFs.”

The FALT tool specifically focuses on heir property, a legal category affecting BIPOC and white communities in the Appalachia and Greater South. Heir property generally refers to land purchased or transferred after the end of the Civil War that has been passed down through several generations without formal estate planning or wills, creating a number of difficulties for farmland owners.