LEXINGTON, Ky. – In the past 20 years, Kentucky has lost 1.4 million acres of farmland and 17,000 farms. More specifically, in 2002 Kentucky had 86,541 farms. In 2022, Kentucky had 69,425 farms.

In an effort to reverse this trend, the Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) launched the Kentucky Farmland in Transition Initiative (KFTI) in April with a goal of keeping more Kentucky farmland in the hands of active farmers.

This initiative highlights helpful resources and activities, pulls together individuals and organizations who care about this issue and want to find ways to help, and develops policy options to consider. The effort offers tools and information to farmers and landowners that enable them to more smoothly facilitate the transition of farmland between hands.

“This initiative has been something that I’ve been passionate about launching,” said Eddie Melton, KFB’s current president and a fifth-generation farmer. “If you project about how many farmers we’re losing, we could lose half of our farms in the next 60 years. Kentucky’s farm families oftentimes are looking for ways to keep farmland in active production, and this initiative will help support them in that goal.”

Melton was elected to his leadership position in 2023. He grew up on and operates a farm near the western Kentucky town of Sebree in Webster County. He’s seen the loss of farmland in his area of the state.

“With the loss of land we are seeing in the Commonwealth, now is the time to start these conversations and find ways to get these families connected to the resources they need,” Melton said. “There are already several great resources available in Kentucky that we want to make sure people know about, but through this initiative we will also engage directly with those involved in transition planning to see what else is needed and could be developed.”

According to Melton, there are three main objectives to KFTI, the first being to increase public education about and involvement in farmland transition.

“This is about awareness and education as we need to let people know what’s happening to our farmland. Most do not know,” Melton said.

The second thrust to this effort, Melton said, is to gather and provide technical assistance and localized resources to assist families who desire to transition farmland.

“By this we mean to get people together and connect them with the proper resources, such as attorneys and CPAs,” Melton said. “Oftentimes farmers want to keep the farm in the family but don’t know where to turn.”

The third part of the initiative, he said, is the pursuit of state and federal policy development that will help keep production agriculture at the forefront of farmland transition and ease common burdens associated with that process.

“The current focus of the KFTI is to engage in a dialogue with farmers and hopeful up-and-coming farmers throughout the state to better understand the barriers blocking their paths to agricultural production,” Melton said. “We’ll look at policies we can work on in Frankfort or even in D.C. to help make these transitions of farmland better and keep it in an active farmer’s hands.”

Melton said stories of new farm ownership and transitioning challenges will be shared online to help steer farm families through the process. Other organizations and businesses are invited to join the KFTI network to share their expertise, upcoming events and resources related to farmland transition planning.

“All this is a big deal,” Melton said, “because we’ve lost 6,500 farms and a half million acres of farmland the last five years alone. If this continues for another 60 years, we’ll lose half our farmers here in Kentucky. We need to find a way to keep people in agriculture and make it more profitable for them.”

Matt Adams, a first-generation farmer in Hardin County, Ky., says the “agriculture industry is a difficult one to break into.”

“I was lucky enough that I had a neighbor and a gentlemen here who helped me get started and helped us purchase our initial farm, but that’s not the case for everyone,” Adams said.

Adams said he’s seen several farms in the area near his go dormant, get divided up or be put to non-agricultural use over the years.

“Every time that a farm is dispersed here or sold, either because someone retires or a death in the family and settling an estate, it seems like a lot of times those farms will go to auction and they’ll be divided up into smaller tracts. Once it’s split up, it really never gets put back together.”

Adams said another factor in the ebbing of Kentucky farmland is the economics of transition, and a lack of incentives to keep using the land for agricultural purposes. Though Kentucky has not had an estate tax since 2005, the financial burden of inheriting an agricultural enterprise can be daunting, leaving auctions the only viable option for some.

“Of course, everything kind of revolves around the dollar,” Adams said. “If there’s some financial incentives that could be put in place at the state level to encourage some people to leave some of this land in agricultural production instead of selling it for the possibility of development, that would definitely help.”

For more information go to kyfarmlandtransition.com.