The Beginning Farmer Center through ISU Extension unites the new and the experienced.

The center has several programs including the Farm On Program, the Ag Link Seminar and Individual Farm Financial Analysis. The center also conducts research and puts out publications. The Beginning Farmer Center was started in 1994 after funds were appropriated by the Iowa Legislature. The center is located in Urbandale.

The Farm On program helps two unrelated parties become matched together to continue farm operations.

“We have a database of retiring farmers or farmers that are considering retirement that would like to bring in the next generation, and quite often these families do not have an heir that is coming back to that farm or that wish to farm,” said David Baker, farm transition specialist for the Beginning Farmer Center.

Baker said many of these retiring farmers will look for someone to continue their farms and that’s where the center can help.

“We try to generate an interview between these two parties and then eventually we want to facilitate a transition plan that the young person can use to take over the farm from the person that is wishing to retire, using the older generation as a mentor to the young people.” Baker said.

Baker said the program allows retiring farmers give back to the community by helping a new family get a start.

“The older generation can retire and continue to watch his operation stay in business and generate income for the new family and be another family in the local community that supports schools and churches and businesses,” Baker said.

Baker said retiring farmers can face problems if they don’t plan ahead for retirement.

“It’s just a matter of failing to plan for this until the very end, and then, quite often, health problems mandate that they either find someone else to take over or they sell out,” Baker said.

Michael Duffy, director of the Beginning Farmer Center, said most of the beginning farmers in the program are young, but the center is open to all ages.

“The majority are students, but there is another type of beginning farmer,” Duffy said. “These are people that have done a career and then come back and want to farm.”

Baker said there are more beginning farmers in the program than retiring.

“[We’ve] got a 7-or-8-to-1 ratio of beginning farmers that would like to farm for every one retiring farmer, so I try to promote the program to the retirement side because that’s the side that we’re severely short on,” Baker said.

Baker said many applicants to the program have come from outside of the state.

“We’ve got a large percentage of our applicants coming from other states, where they’ve read about the Beginning Farmer Center on the Web site and in so doing they can see Iowa as an exciting place to be and one of the leaders in agriculture today, so they want to be part of that,” Baker said.

The Ag Link seminar is a conference put on once a year at Iowa State for juniors and seniors who were planning to go back to their home farm and continue farm operations, but it has opened up to include anyone interested in beginning farming.

“We’ve opened that up now to include noncollege students that are going back to the farm, not necessarily juniors and seniors, but any age that choose to go back and join the family,” Baker said.

The center also helps with financial planning and conflict resolution.

“We do farm financial analysis for farm operations to let the families know whether there’s enough income being developed in order to support two families,” Baker said, “We do family counseling if there’s conflict between the two generations. We try to help the families work through those issues.”

Duffy said the center also coordinates with the National Farm Transition Network.

“One of the things we’ve done is we’re looking into retirement plans of the older generation,” Duffy said. “It’s very important that if the older generation doesn’t retire or make plans then it makes it very difficult for the younger generation.”

Duffy said the center looks at alternative enterprises for beginning farmers.

“We also do a lot of work looking at what are some of the alternative enterprises that the beginning farmer can do to generate enough income,” Duffy said. “This would be alternative crops or it could be alternative production techniques.”

Baker said the center promotes itself to many different venues in order to let farmers know about the many services it has to offer.

“We look forward to just spreading the word that Iowa State Extension can do these types of services for farm families,” Baker said.