What are the goals of the Plan?
The Plan is organized around three overlapping goals:
- Accelerate the permanent protection and stewardship of farmland. Once farmland has been converted to other land uses, it will never return to agriculture.
- Increase access to farmland. Enabling farmland accessibility requires equitable, affordable, and identifiable opportunities and options.
- Support and enhance the viability of farms and farmland. Successful farms are one of the best tools for protecting farmland.
Why is the Plan important?
We are losing agricultural land and farms fast! Between 1997 and 2022 Massachusetts lost 113,000 acres (2022 Census of Agriculture). That’s about 3.7 times the size of the land area of Boston or 1.8 times the size of Martha’s Vineyard. According to American Farmland Trust’s “Farms Under Threat 2040” Report, between 2016 and 2040 Massachusetts, without additional investment and policy changes, is projected to lose 1,200 farms and 50,000 – 89,000 acres of farmland. The farmland that we do have is often out of reach of farmers and aspiring farmers, primarily due to cost. And farms themselves struggle to remain viable, and their tenuous financial sustainability risks the loss of even more farmland to other uses.
How will the Plan be implemented?
This is a plan for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) is promoting, monitoring, and facilitating implementation of the Plan, building momentum from existing programs and initiatives. It is an integral part of the Commonwealth’s climate and natural resources initiatives.
Partnerships and collaboration are essential. Non-profits, municipalities, land trusts, other state agencies, educational institutions, private entities, and many others have key resources, capacity, expertise and/or jurisdiction that will be needed for successful implementation.
The plan also identifies opportunities for the legislature to make policy and fiscal choices to support farmland goals.
In recognition of how much work is contained within the Plan, MDAR created a new staff position – Farmland Action Plan Coordinator – to support coordination between all of the partners and to assist with implementation of tasks. Katharine Otto can be contacted at Katharine.s.otto@mass.gov.
The Farmland Action Plan incorporates equity principles and include several equity-related actions and tasks. Effective implementation of equity goals will require broad engagement, empowerment, and coalition-building. Katharine Otto is working closely with MDAR’s EJ Team to engage with equity partners early in the process to ensure that Historically Underserved Farmers and the organizations that support them are involved.
Sign up for email updates
We are updating our contact lists for the Plan as we embark on the implementation phase. Many people were involved in the development of the plan, but participation in implementation is open to anyone. It will take a broad group of committed stakeholders to reach the Plan’s ambitious goal, and we want to hear from you if you or your organization are interested in participating.
Please email Katharine to let her know of your interest – whether to help with implementing the plan, or simply staying in the loop on its progress! Katharine.S.Otto@mass.gov
Upcoming events and meetings
- For Land Trusts – Online meeting. Wednesday, September 18. 12pm – 1:30pm. More details and register here. Email Katharine.s.otto@mass.gov for details
- More to come soon!
The Plan and additional resources
The MFAP is a big plan! There are lots of strategies, actions and tasks – and all the supporting information needed to support those.
Over the coming months we’ll be creating some quick guides and doing many presentations to explain the MFAP for various audiences. Please reach out if there is a specific audience or topic you’d like her to work on sooner rather than later!