Gaining Ground in Maine is our new statewide affordable farms initiative to build partnerships with farmers, land trusts, state agencies, funding sources, communities and members of community-supported-agriculture (CSA) farms among others to preserve farms that are affordable to farmers and worked by them in perpetuity. This three-year demonstration project will be replicated in other states in the future.
Our Gaining Ground initiative helps people create new ownership structures for farms—structures that permanently protect the affordability of whole farms (including house and barns). These models:
• Enable older farmers to retire, passing affordable land and infrastructure to younger farmers.
• Allow new farmers to gain equity in the farm’s business and infrastructure.
• Keep farm infrastructure permanently connected to agriculturally productive land.
• Protect the interests of communities in sustaining access to healthy local food.
Please click here to link to our affordable farm preservation manual for a detailed description of our methods.
2009 Survey of Maine’s CSA Farmers
Our Gaining Ground in Maine Advisory Committee
Upcoming Workshops: We will be posting the locations and the dates of future workshops when they have been scheduled.
We are available to present information on affordable farm preservation throughout Maine.
We also provide counseling on land tenure issues (by phone, email, and on site) to farmers, land trusts and others; help adapt these models to particular local situations – through document-review, phone and email consultations, and on-site technical assistance; and work with a limited number of CSAs and others to develop strategies for funding local farm preservation projects.
To inquire about any of these services, please contact us at info@equitytrust.org or by phone at 413-863-9038.