Editor’s Note: This story was first published on New Hampshire Bulletin.
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For Andal Sundaramurthy, the path to finding what she calls her forever farm was bumpy at best. The process was full of failed attempts and false starts. In the end, it took her about a decade-long search to find the right place for Nalla Farm, a small-scale vegetable growing operation on a three-acre plot of land in Wilmot, N.H., that she’s leasing with the option to eventually own it outright.
That’s a plight that other new, would-be farmers looking to set down roots in New Hampshire come up against too. But not all of them have a decade’s worth of determination to make it to the finish line like Sundaramurthy did, a barrier that is limiting the number of new farmers who can successfully get established in the state. And addressing this problem is becoming more urgent as the average age of farmers continues to rise; currently, the average farmer is in their late 50s, nearing the later part of their career.
But many new farmers get deterred by the process of finding suitable land, according to Melissa Benedikt, who now works as a full-time farmer at Benedikt Dairy in Goffstown, N.H. “A lot of people just give up after not being able to make it on their first property,” she said.
Benedikt and her husband, Max, had to uproot their own operation twice before they found a place that would work for them permanently.
Before Benedikt was farming full-time, she worked with Sundaramurthy to help her find farmable land through a non-profit called Land for Good that helps connect farmers with available land and navigate often-complex lease negotiations with landowners. The non-profit, which works with farmers across New England, just received a $750,000 grant through USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development P>kern 0.09pt
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>kern 0.09pt<“Then, prices of land went just crazy stupid, exacerbating that problem,” Wilner said. Price is such an issue because the net profits that farmers can hope to earn in the region are so small, ranging from just 3% to 10%, according to studies from the UNH Cooperative Extension.
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>kern 0.09pt<“I kept having the same conversation over and over with people who had this beautiful land, and they just didn’t want to change anything,” she said.
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>kern 0.09pt<“It’s the price we pay for being in our market and having a quality of life where we don’t have to spend hours in the truck,” she said. Benedikt said communication is the key to maintaining a good relationship between landowner and farmer.
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