As part of our Farms for Farmers program, Equity Trust is partnering with the National Young Farmers Coalition to offer training for land trusts focused on preserving affordable farms.
Access to farmland remains one of the biggest barriers for beginning farmers. Strategies such as conservation easements with an option to purchase at agricultural value (OPAV) and long-term ground leases that let farmers build equity have significant potential to help young farmers access land.
Equity Trust, together with a mentor group of land trusts with significant experience protecting working farms, is providing land trusts with strategies and tools to help farmers access land. The trainings are designed to build on the innovation and leadership of these mentor land trusts to scale up the use of these strategies nationally.
There was a great turnout for the first packed training which took place on Sunday, September 21, 2014 in Providence, Rhode Island. Click here to read more about last year’s training. 
The National Young Farmers Coalition and Equity Trust convened our second-annual Land Access Innovations Training to help land trusts utilize tools to protect farmland affordability.
The training took place on Sunday, October 11, 2015 in Sacramento, California from 8:30 am – 4:00 pm.
The one-day, in-person training was aimed at staff from land trusts with a high degree of commitment to protecting working farms and sufficient capacity to move forward in the implementation of farm protection projects that incorporate affordability innovations. Topics included: easement enhancements and ground leases that preserve affordability and active farming; funding strategies; monitoring and enforcement; and legal considerations.
The training was free for attendees thanks to the generous support of the Cedar Tree Foundation, UNFI, and the Lydia B. Stokes Foundation.
In addition to Equity Trust, this year’s presenters included:
South of the Sound Community Farm Land Trust
