Farmland Ownership and Leasing: Implications for Young and Beginning Farmers

Ani Katchova and Mary Clare Ahearn

No 184725, Staff Papers from University of Kentucky, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: This study considers the issue of the transition of new farmers into U.S. agriculture, by examining land ownership and leasing trends. Our approach is to characterize the entire distribution by farmer age and farmer experience rather than using young versus old and beginning versus established farmer categories. We also use a linked-farms longitudinal approach instead of a repeated cross-sectional approach to show trends over time in farmland expansion and contraction. Differences in farm size are more pronounced based on farmer experience than farmer age, as farms operated by older beginning farmers tend to be smaller and do not tend to grow over time. We find that it is mostly young farmers as opposed to all beginning farmers that rapidly expand their farm operations after entering agriculture. Our findings inform policy makers about the strategies that young and beginning farmers use to start their businesses and expand over time and suggest more effective approaches for targeting loan programs to young and beginning farmers.

Keywords: Agricultural Finance; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/184725/files/FarmlandOwnershipandLeasing.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ukysps:184725

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.184725

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Papers from University of Kentucky, Department of Agricultural Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().