Page 6 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

Yet, the landscape for farm owners and operators could be changing faster than many have
anticipated, says Brett Sciotto, CEO of Aimpoint Research, a global marketing research firm
that has done extensive work analyzing current agricultural trends and identifying the “Farmer of
the Future.” He’s identified six trends that could speed up structural changes in agriculture –
putting a lot of pressure on farmers and traditional ag institutions. (See “The Disruptors: Six
trends that will shape the future structure of U.S. agriculture,” below).

Though the pace may be undetermined, you should look for at least 370 million acres of
agricultural lands to change hands in the 48 contiguous states at least once in the 10 to 20 years
ending in 2034.

That’s the best calculated guess of American
Farmland Trust (AFT), which focuses on the
whos, whys and hows of access and
ownership of agricultural lands and how to
protect them. AFT analysts crunched
numbers, including ages of landowners and
principal farm operators and what farm
owners and operators themselves told USDA
they expect for their land in the upcoming
five years, as reported in the Agriculture
Department’s five-year censuses and the
Economic Research Service’s 2014 report on
land tenure and transfers.

AFT applied some actuarial logic to the data,
and “the assumption was, given their ages, (owners and operators) are going to have to take
some action in the next 10 to 20 years,” said Jennifer Dempsey, director of AFT’s Farmland
Information Center. Or transfers may happen after they’re gone, and thus her center projected
ownership of 40% of the 48 states’ 991 million farm and ranch acres will change hands
from 2015 to about 2035.

Annually, farmland transfers will average only about 2% of all U.S. farmland, says AFT.
Further, among the acres to be transferred, the majority are likely to change hands via private
transactions such as gifts, wills, or trusts, and another 14 % to
be sold between family members. So, AFT says that leaves
only about 25% being sold in any open market fashion, which
translates to well under 1% of all U.S. farmland.

Meanwhile, Randy Dickhut, senior vice president for real
estate operations at Omaha-based Farmers National Company,
observes that the 1% per year of farmland reaching the
market is now bumping up against “a large generational
transfer of wealth” – the mountain of assets such as
farmland accumulated by the World War II and Korean
War generations.

Randy Dickhut, Farmers National

“Most people who own farmland have had it for a while,” he
said, and tend to hold onto it. About 70% of the clients for whom Farmers National manages

4 www.Agri-Pulse.com