MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

My name is Mariel Borgman. If you weren't in the earlier session, we really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to learn with us today. We're really excited to have several presenters here to be talking about farmland. I know this is the beginning farmer track. Many of you may be looking for farm land, thinking about how to finance it. And some people may be thinking where we're going to go in the future. So this session will cover all of that. We're really excited to welcome our presenters. So without anything further, I'm going to pass it over to today's presenters. It looks like we're starting with Jill, so welcome Jill. Thank you, Mariel. Welcome everybody. Good afternoon. We're talking about the three of farm land, finding funding and the future government. We have one to four presenters here today. I will take the show away for the first the finding portion. My name is Jill Dohner. I work for the MIFarmLink program. I am based out of Washington County Conservation District, and I am the current interim director of Washington County as well. I will let Annie Allen, Amber and Becky introduce themselves as we continue in the presentation. So, finding that how do you find farm land, the traditional ways. Back in the day you go through a real estate listing, you find farm land that way you outright buy it. You talk to your neighbors, you knock on their door, you see who has farm land available. Word of mouth, Church, the coffee shop. Now, how do you do it these days? How do you do it when there's a younger population of farmers coming in and they're looking for land that is where we lead to my farm land. I'll introduce that concept in a. What are some of the barriers to find farm land? How do beginning farmers find it? What if they're first generation? What if they don't live in Michigan as well? What if they're coming from the outside? What if they're a person of color who doesn't have access to the resources? Money. It's always a big one. What else? If you can think of any other barriers, please drop them in the chat and I'll be sure to add them to the presentation. Farm land is at risk. You know that this is getting worse and worse, especially with the newest egg numbers that were just dropped. Last week, the USA lost four acres of farmland per hour, 2012-2017 That's probably even worse down the USA lost 2000 acres of farm land every day, 2001-2016 Over 40% of the nation's farm land is owned by people over age 65. It has an aging population. Like our presidential election, nearly 300 million acres of American farm land are expected to change hands in the next 20 years. That's according to the American Farm Land Trust. This was the news today. The 2022 Census of Agriculture details major loss in firm numbers. Census confirms egg consolidation, Eg Census reveals policy is failing small farmers. What the heck are we going to do about this? MIFarmLink is the new solution for Michigan. We are a program that was developed in the last year and it is all about preserving Michigan farms and farming by linking them. Let me explain what that's all about. First myself. I'm a farmer, I'm a beekeeper. I own rustic roots farm. I came into my farm 14 years ago. The traditional way we were seeking land, we found it at luckily low prices. It was right after the recession and I was able to afford my land. This is not how it is now. What MIFarmLink offers to do is to shepherd that farm land into the hands of the next generation of farmers. We do that through a goal of developing, implementing, and overseeing a successful land living program hosted currently through Washington County Conservation District, but then with the goal of expanding it to the rest of the state. The vision is that MIFarmLink plays a vital role in preserving Michigan farming as a lifestyle, industry, and land stewardship practice by helping to bridge the divide between farming generations and connecting farmland with its next farm. How the heck do we do this? Again, some of these numbers are crazy out there. With the over 65 age of Michigan farmers, 35% of Michigan farmers would expect to retire in the next ten years. Now, what are their plans? What are their succession plans? This was the recent number. The number of farms in Michigan in 2022 was 44,300 down from 1,700 farms in 2021. It's important in Michigan. Really important, we're the second most diverse agricultural state. If you are looking at climate change, what's going to be happening in the next 10-20 years in Michigan? Is our climate going to be sought after because we have a great growing zone? What's going to happen? What we look at is this new farm linking approach. I say we're not necessarily innovative in the USA for firm linking programs, but in Michigan we are. There are other land linking websites out there and programs in the New England area. In particular, there's a lot of land linking programs by state, and also New England Farmland Finder. Colorado has one, California has a farm linking program. What the heck is this farm program that I keep talking about? Well, what happened here in Michigan is that in June of 2021, Ottawa County became the birthplace of my farm. That's where our founder Becky, who will speak today. She started this farm linking program. And then in 2023, Washington County was well poised with funds to take over the MIFarmLink Program and then grow it statewide. What is it to do? This is a glimpse of the newest updated website that will be published in the next month or so. You say it says, List a farm, find a farm, make a link. This basically means that any farmer can go to this website that is available statewide for all Michiganders. Can you can list your land if you would like to offer it up for mentorship, for outright sale, or a lease opportunity, for a rental. You can post that on the website if you're a farmer. You can also make a farmer profile. You can create this by saying, this is what skills I have as a farm say. I'm particularly adept at fruit orchard farming and organic vegetables. I can say what my skills are and maybe the geographical area that you're interested in and then that connection occurs. You can either go to the website looking for lien or you can go to the website looking to find a farmers. Those connections are made for all Michigan farmers and so you can see here, you find a farmer, find farm land with property, and then find farm transition guidance, which is basically good resources to find farm land. You go to this web page and you would say, oh, well, I'm looking for this kind of acreage, I'm looking in this area, I'm looking to just lease, but not operate sale, and I'm looking in this county. So you could look up that information and it would give you a list of those properties available. You would come to something like this where you could see in Dexter right now, Wiley Road, there's this property available, it's a lease opportunity, and then you can reach out to that person. You would just have to create a profile to be able to connect with that firm. Then, of course, the resources are plentiful and there's really supposed to be a good list of curated resources. MSU provides a lot, but we also share many of their resources. This is the end goal of this website, is to create the success stories, right? Create these links. And this just happened a month or so ago in West Michigan. It's called Greenfield Grazing Farm and this older farmer was looking to lease up her sheep and have somebody take over her farming operations. And she set up a really good system where her neighbor down the road who found her through MIFarmLand Link, is taking over half the herd this year for lease and then the goal of buying them out right in the next year. So it's a mentorship program this year and easing into the outright sale, so those sheep will be well looked after. This just happened this morning. Cedar Field Farm, it's out of Belleville, Michigan. This property just was linked. The farmer wanted to look at a new direction with this farm, but he did not want to sell the farm or give it up. New farmers came in and they're going to be through a CSA and do market production under the Cedar Field Farm name. It's a really great way for the new farmers to have an opportunity to create their own farm without having to go through that whole process. Here's some questions that are asked, like who can use MIFarmLink? Well, anybody can use MIFarmLink. Usually farmers do. Any kind of land can be listed. It has to be agriculturally zoned. You can do sales, leases, mentorships, networking opportunities, and any price point. And it could be any conservation status as well. No cost to list, we just do the linking. We don't do the sales or leases or any agreements like that. If you have questions, send to me and go to www.MIFarmLink.org and then you can also, you don't need a realtor or anything to list property because it doesn't, again, have to be an outright sale of property. It can be a lease situation or rent. We are looking for more farm land so that we can host and make sure that new farmers, which is really an eight to one ratio of new land seekers trying to find property and then carrying them with what is available the future. A prospering farm, linking statewide program with regional hubs throughout Michigan to help farmers preserve farmland for generations to come. We're looking at trying to explore five different hubs throughout Michigan. One being an upper peninsula, West, middle southeast and northern, lower. That would really be like on the ground presence for my farm. A few other things besides MIFarmLink and what I like to talk about, the PDR, the purchase of development rights. That's a program that is through MDARD. You can get a little bit less expensive land. You'd have to contact your local PDR program and identify land. And so that is one route you can take if you're looking for other farm land. There are two well known real estate agencies that are nationwide and they specialize in just marketing farm land. It's on a wider scale than my farm land. Last time I looked, People's Company and Farmers National Company had like two listings in Michigan. But if you're looking outside of our state, then you can go to these websites. Who else to talk to? Crop advisors, they talk to all the farmers. They may know what land is available before it's actually available. Appraisal Auctions, Sheridan Auction Services, appraisers that work with easements, they may know of land opportunities in advance, and Land Conservancies, the Heart of the Lakes, is a Michigan based directory, so to speak. And it has every Land Conservancy on there and you can search through county. That's a great resource to get you started, especially if you know what geographical region part. And then the PA 116, the Farm Land, an open space preservation program. It was designated in 1975. It's just a Michigan program and it's basically a tax incentive to keep your farm in farmland. Those agreements can last anywhere 10-90 years. Usually farm owners who have these who operate under a PA 116 wants to see their farmland continue to be farmed, and so these are good ways to get into that land as well. And then the American Farm Land Trust Land Access Navigators, again, Becky will speak but she is entering into this new program and it's a great training program to aid exiting and entering farmers into the land transfer process. So she can answer questions on these two. Here's a couple of useful resources. These are available on MIFarmLink.org but there are a good things to know when you're beginning to access land, a beginning farmer. Then lastly, I'll take questions on the chat and I'll try to answer them if others speak. But I will let Annie Allen take it away here at Amber Echlin as well from the Greenstone Farm Credit Services. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Annie Allen. I am the regional vice president of sales and customer relations for our north region team at Greenstone. And I will be presenting our second, and that is funding it. And so now, after Jill's presentation, you have found your dream property to start farming or even expand your business. And so now you need some assistance, maybe financing that property, because you don't have the capital to purchase 100% cash. So I'm going to share the fundamentals of a lending underwriting process. And financing considerations always start with the five C's of credit. So that's where we're going to begin first off. So we're primarily discussing real estate transactions during this presentation. But there are three categories for farm loans and that's operating short term and long term loans. Real estate transactions fall under the long term loans and they typically are financed 10-30 years. These loans can be as simple as just simply financing the property and as complex as the purchase along with a construction. Let's begin with the fundamentals. The five C's of credit are character, capital, collateral, and conditions. I'm going to go through each of these and explain why they are important for a lender in the financing process. All five C's are equally important and they all work together. When a lender is making the loan decision, it is essential for you and your lender to communicate through the whole loan process, as some lenders consider communication to be the six of credit. The first C is character. There are several factors considered for character. When you meet with a lender for the first time, it's best to be prepared with a business plan. Your business plan should explain your experience and background of what you plan to farm. If you have no experience, that's okay. Tell the story of why you desire to start your business. List your education and licensing certificates. Also list the requested licensings you need for your business. Or if you're in the works of obtaining certain licenses. With every loan request, a lender is required to pull your credit bureau. We understand that life is difficult sometimes, so it's best to be transparent with your lender and explain any blemishes on your credit upfront. All of these elements are essential to character. The second is capital. Your business capital is found within your balance sheet. You should complete a balance sheet annually for your business, which aligns with your tax year end. Essentially, your balance sheet is a snapshot in time and it shows the trend year over year of your owner's equity position in your business. It is best practice to separate your personal balance sheet as well. Keep the business and personal separate into two different balance sheets. So what is a balance sheet? Let's break it down into some simple terms. A balance sheet is made up of six quadrants. First, we have your current assets. Examples of current assets are tangible items that you can sell immediately for cash, such as crops and livestock. Intermediate assets are assets you may not consider selling right away and they have a useful life on your operation. Examples are machinery and equipment, vehicles and raised breeding stock. Long term assets are your real estate buildings and improvements. Your primary residence, for example, would be placed on your personal balance sheet, retirement accounts. Those would also be placed on a personal balance sheet. Current appraised values are used to value assets. Fair market value can be used in lieu of that appraisal. Moving to the right hand side of the balance sheet, we begin with the current liabilities. These are accounts that should be paid right away with cash. Examples are current payables over 30 days, tax payables and lines of credit balances. Intermediate assets are loans you have on your machinery and equipment and vehicles. And your long term liabilities are your real estate mortgages. Loan balances at the time of completion should be used for all debt. We have put together a user friendly balance sheet, and this link will be available after the presentation today. Feel free to check it out and get your balance sheet up to date. The third is capacity Capacity measures income and expense trends. Lenders will rely on historical tax returns for repayment purposes for your loan request. For new businesses. A detailed projection with a month to month projection will be considered. Let's break down an income statement. In simple terms, we start by listing all the revenue generated by the operation for one year. This is cash. This is all of the income from your goods sold. If you are buying product to resell, costs of goods sold will be subtracted here. This is your total gross profit. Next, we look at your expenses. Operating expenses are labor. Repairs, seed fuel. This is only to name a few. I know you have several other operating expenses on your farm. We subtract your operating expenses along with your interest paid on your loans from this gross profit. This equals your net income. Next, we subtract your taxes, owner withdrawal because you have to be paid for the work that you do, add back in non farm income, and subtract your annual principal payments on your loans. This is your margin after debt service, after all income sources are considered and the expenses are subtracted. The margin is your revenue remaining to reinvest into your operation. When there are no historical tax returns or when you plan to expand, a lender will ask for a projection, like the simple example that we just broke down with income and expense, you can adjust for your projection. For projections, contracted prices can be used. If you don't have contracts, then you can use the market value. All contracted income or expense should be provided as additional information to your lender. The next C is collateral. Most lenders will require a secondary source of repayment, which is called collateral. What are you willing to provide to the bank in the event you are unable to repay your debt for operating and short term loans? Lenders will rely on machinery and equipment, livestock, and crops. The depreciateable assets listed within your intermediate assets on your balance sheet that we just covered. For real estate loans, the lender will rely on the real estate being purchased or refinanced as collateral. The fifth C of credit conditions when the other four C's are less than the lenders standard and to provide offsetting strengths for the loan request. A lender will offer loan conditions to provide you a loan approval. Examples of conditions are guarantees through FSA, the Farm Service Agency, or through SBA, which is the Small Business Administration. Or maybe you have a friend or a family member who is willing to be a guarantor or am on your loan. There are other considerations for financial reporting requirements and requirements for a lender to be part of business meetings. As a lender, every farming operation has their own unique story. Instead of financials, if you have a working relationship with a lender today, that is great. You have probably already experienced the five Cs of credit. If you do not have a professional relationship with a lender, I would encourage you to start interviewing local lenders to find a lender and an institution that works best for you and your operation. At Greenstone, we have 35 branches spread across Michigan and northeast Wisconsin and close to 75 lenders. I would highly encourage you to sit down with a local lender to discuss your farming operation and how a lender can assist you in providing capital to your business. Now, I'll turn it over to Amber. She's going to discuss Greenstone's Cultivate Growth program. He everyone. I'm Amber Echlin, recently Amber Pratt. I got married. I'm the PR Specialist here at Greensone Farm Credit Services. And in my role I actually help out with coordinating events, industry trade shows, our different sponsorships. And part of my role is also helping oversee our cultivate growth program. Both Annie, myself, and then two other people at Greenstone are the leads on that program. And then we also work with our credit analysts and our loan officers to help define this program and shape it to what really works for young beginning and small farmers. We can go ahead and get started with that a little bit about cultivate growth. The idea behind it is we need to make sure that the next generation of farming and agriculture have not just the financing, but the resources and tools that they need to actually succeed, to get started and then succeed in the industry. It is a very capital intense industry, so we just want to do what we can to make it a little bit easier. Help alleviate some of the stress when it comes to maybe paying for the education or finding resources help. In any way that we can, We offer flexible financing options, which I'll talk more about more about end of minutes. And then with that we also do competitive interest rates, so we try to have more flexible underwriting. So again, it's just easier helping take down some of those barriers that a lot of new and beginning farmers see. And then the biggest component of our cultivate growth program is having resources available for young, beginning and small farmers to focus on developing their leadership skills, their growth, making sure that they're able to make better decisions on the farm. And that comes through networking, education, different conferences, attending things like that. Before we dive into all that, the eligibility for being a young beginning or small farmer, which we also call Y, BSF. Young is anyone who is 35 years of age or less. Farming is anyone who is ten years, ten years in farming or less. And this is as a decision maker on the farm. And then someone who is a small farmer. So this is anyone who, I think this is a huge number, but when it comes to agriculture, the numbers are typically larger. But anyone who has just farm income, gross sales of less than $350,000 so say you are doing really well, you're making $500,000 off the farm and you make $50,000 on the farm. You are considered a small farmer because it's just agriculture production that we're talking about a little bit about our emerging loan program. This is what we designed specifically for small farmers who are just not able to get traditional funding. Or maybe they aren't able to meet some of our normal five Cs of credit that Annie talked about already. This is something we revamped in the last two years, specifically for helping people get access to financing. So now we have up to $100,000 in operating loans or those short term loans that any discussed, and up to $100,000 in long term financing. So looking at the real estate side of things, and this is something that we're really excited about. A lot of the customers that we've talked about, this is exactly what they're looking for and that they needed. And the traditional banks and maybe, and credit unions can work with them. But this is that resource, that financial resource that they've really been needing. You can go back one slide. Part of that is the Emerging Loan Education Program. And this is like the counterpart to our overall loan program. We set aside some time to figure out, okay, what can we do to help these producers beyond just the financing? And so we decided that education is the next best thing, making sure that you're doing smart things with the money that you've been funded. So we have a document, it's like a list of activities where you can earn up to 300 points. And it's say a conference is 75 points, or doing the mentorship program that I'll get into is 250 points. You can achieve points by completing different educational focused items, and then that actually takes your interest rate down for the entire length of your loan. So say the ten year loan, you'd complete it year one, you're done for the rest of the time. That half a percentage interest rate will get that reduction for the entire length of your loan, which I think is a really nice aspect of that, that's like the financing. In a nutshell, some of the resources that we offer, we also offer up to $40,000 each year through our Cultivate Growth Grant program. This grant program is specifically for people who live in Michigan or northeast Wisconsin, and then qualify for one of the three categories as a young beginning or small farmer. And so if you are a Greenstone member, you can earn up to $1,000 each year. And if you're not a member or a customer, you can still be eligible for up to $500 and those funds can be used for a different agricultural program. So say this fantastic conference you had to pay for, that's something that the grant would cover. You would just get reimbursed similar to the crop summit or any educational and agriculture focused event or program. And you can also do greenstone resources. We offer tax and accounting resources and your first tax and accounting review with the Greenstone expert will be reimbursed up to whatever allowance you get. Whether it's that 500 or $10,000 mark. The final thing that you can use it for is business and farm consultants. So you want to have an agronomist come in or someone to come in and talk about what you could be doing better on your farm. It also covers consulting fees, which I think is a huge way to really just improve your farm immensely and have that one on one training with an expert. You can find more information about these grants by asking me here today or by going online at Greensonfcs.com slash grants. Everything is listed there. You can download the application and you can check it out for yourself. I have another slide too, I believe here. Okay. The next resource I want to talk to you about is the Cultivate Growth Mentorship Program. This program, I think is really fantastic. It pairs young beginning and small farmers with experienced mentors of the same commodity. So this is an 18 month program that we typically, we usually start recruiting in the summer and then we finalize pairs and then kick off the program in either fall or late winter of that same year. Then the mentorship goes the entire year, and then it wraps up the following spring. It's about 18 months, so that you get to. Really just see all the different seasons of that farm operation. And see the different challenges that they have to overcome and work through each planting and harvesting season. They found that to be really beneficial. Historically, we've had an external facilitator come in and lead the conversation. So they'll meet on the farm with you guys. You'll have at least one farm visit per group per year, but we really encourage more of that. And then if you can meet up at industry events and conferences and different things like that, and just maximize your internship, your mentorship, that's really how you're going to get the most out of that relationship. And making new networks and connections in the industry. You can find more at the link below. And then I see someone's putting these details in the chat, so thank you for that. That's helpful. You can find out more about our overall cultivate, growth, education and resources by visiting us online. We're here to help you guys. We're here to help the next generation get started, overcome a lot of the challenges that are just unavoidable sometimes in agriculture, in any way that we can. I can't say so myself, but I know Annie and a lot of our lenders are very knowledgeable in what they do. They're experts when it comes to financing. So if you ever have financing questions, please meet with the loan officer, whether it's Greenstone or someone else, we're here to help you. And then just make sure you're utilizing and maximizing those resources that are out there because they're designed with you all in mind and if you're not using them, you could be missing out greatly. Okay. We'll turn it over to Becky and hold questions for all of us all at the end. My name is Becky Huttenga. I am with Ottawa County, the Economic Development Coordinator there, but a big portion of my job is farmland protection, putting easements on land, doing whatever we can to make sure transference accession plans are in place to stop the loss of our farm's. Something I'm very active in, the local, state, and national level is trying to prevent our farm land conversion to other uses. The census numbers that just came out are quite disturbing. Our county has been pretty consistent over the past number of years on how much land you have in farms and a drop in this last sense, it's concerning. I'm going to just do a few slides about the future of farm land because that's where I work and I'm going to share my screen now and get started. Hopefully all will work well there. Are we good everyone? See my slide version? Yes, Joe. Great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. The pool, it looks like about half of you are looking for farm land and half of you are not. It looks like about 75% of you don't have any debt. That's fantastic. And about half of you haven't ever thought about a succession plan. That is not uncommon. I think the demographic of this group probably speaks to that a little bit more if we're talking to a different group like the one I'm in the Lansing Center right now with Michigan Farm Bureau's Legislative seminar. I hope that group that's a lower number in this group of folks that have not talked about the succession plan yet, but the future of your farm land, a big, big piece of what happens to the your land in the future is transfer and succession. Do you have a plan in place when you're no longer going to farm that land? I'm going to cover dispute quick slides. We have plenty of time for questions. Please keep those coming. My slides will be really quick. So we're just going to talk about transference succession planning tools. This can be scary. This is a great info graphic, but you look at that and you say, oh my goodness, this is huge. I look at that and then this is how I feel. I go, wow, that's really complicated. Maybe I'll do a simple will for now and split all my stuff between my three children equally regardless of whether they farm or not. It might cause problems later, but that's okay. And then later shows up and then there you are with a bigger problem. There's tools out there that can help prevent that. It's really hard to get started. It's analysis paralysis. There's so much that's involved in planning for the succession and transfer of your land. And it's not just numbers, It's relationships. I think a lot of people that have land, a farm, a farm operation, a family that's involved just get this analysis paralysis. There's just so many things you need to do. So many choices to be made. So many options that it's easier just to turn a blind eye and avoid it. What's the cure for the analysis paralysis. It's easy for me to say because I don't have a farm that I'm planning for. But I think the best way to get started is just to do something. Do anything. Just pick something and do it. Start the process. It can be as simple as talking with your kids or the kids and you want to take over with your parents, get the conversation started. Or maybe talk with a friend or a neighbor who has already been through this and maybe get some information from them about where did they start, how did it go, how long did it take? You could call your accountant, your attorney, your Ag lender, your friendly faces, A Greenstone Farm Credit, if that's who you're working with. Those are all going to be people that are going to have to be part of the team. Put together a transfer and succession plan for your operation Land MSUE has got great farm business educators can get you started on the path and help you get going on it. As was mentioned earlier, there is now a land transfer navigator program. That is something I don't expect anybody on this call to be aware of. Just started. We'll talk a little bit about that, but that's going to be a resource for everyone coming up. There's often really good seminars and workshops. We'll talk about a couple of those coming up. And that's a great place to start to, to learn some things, get your feet wet a little bit, start to tackle this. But I think the big thing is just to pick something and do it. And then maybe tell someone who's close to your circle that you are starting on it and hold yourself accountable. If I make a new resolution in my head, it's not going to go very far. If I share it with somebody else, then I've got some accountability. That might be another trick, but really the bottom lines just do it, tackle it, and do it, pick something and do it, there's the polls. That's cool. Thank you. Going through a few of those reasons, it's really easy to find and it's in the resource page that will be dropped in the chat to find any of MSU Farm business educators. They can all help you direct your resources, connect you with private sector individuals that can guide you on the path. Then, as we mentioned, land transfer navigators, this is a partnership between American Farm Land Trust in the Natural Resource Conservation Service. They identified a need to do more than just place agricultural easements on farm land to protect, we need to make a plan for that land transfer in the future. This partnership, the goal, is to increase the number of farm and ranch land that has a transfer plan in place. Pass that land to the new generation. That that process of passing the land to the new generation looks a lot different now. It's not like it used to be when farm land and farming and farms stayed in the family, kids took over. It was very traditional. We have a lot of nontraditional situations. Now, these land transfer navigators are intended to help facilitate those processes. There's two transfer navigators in the state of Michigan. I am one of them and I'm based in Ottawa County. And then Laura Regan, who is one of my esteemed colleagues in land preservation, she is up in Grand Traverse County and she is another one. And then there's another 33 nationwide. In the whole cohort, new tool, we're developing our action plans, we're developing our tool boxes. Right now, neither Laura no, I are going to be a huge help to anybody in the next month or two. But a little bit after that, we can be very helpful to folks looking to put a succession plan in place and then coming up just next week. If you've never heard Jolene Brown speak, she is a wonderful speaker on transition plans and succession planning. We've had her coming into Ottawa County in the past. She does visit Michigan fairly regularly, but that's just one, there's numerous different succession planning workshops and tools out there put on by some of our private sector colleagues as well. But attending a program is a great way to get started. We're having one also, sadly, on the very same day, but over on the west side of the state, in the Ottawa County, Kent County. Allegheny County area. We are having one at the yacht Basin arena in Holland. We're going to talk about a lot of different tools that you can use to conserve your land, to plan for transition of your land, and these types of things. But the point is that there's a lot of resources out there to put a succession plan in place, and that's one of the best ways to protect land. That's one of the toughest things to do to get it in place, but it's one of the best ways to protect our farmland. Maybe you don't want to go to a meeting. Maybe you don't want to chat with people yet. Maybe you just want to get on the Internet and noodle on things a little bit. There's a lot of resources out there. One of my favorites is through the Land for Good as a session planning workbook. You can look at it and walk you through step by step. What documents do I have to have? Who has to be on my team? What are my options to structure the entity? What if one of my kids wants to farm and three don't? How do I do this? What if I don't have any errors? All the different things that go into it. And if you just like to sit and do some research and think on it a little bit, as long as you do something, don't get in the analysis paralysis while you're doing that. But there's lots of options and ways to get started. And again, this land for good succession planning workbook will be linked in the document that I'll drop in the chat at the end, I look at my time, 146, we're doing great, so we'll have plenty of time for questions. There's two most difficult steps in my transition happens too quickly in farm transfer succession planning. In the first of the two difficult steps starting in the second is finishing, just dollar is to it. It's just taught, but it's important and we really encourage you to do that. And there's so many tools and folks that can help you and want to help you. There we go. So I'd be curious. There's half of you that don't have a plan in place. Maybe you don't even have land yet. Some of you are engaged. I'd be curious. What is your next step? Succession planning. You do want to drop that in the chat, maybe inspire somebody else on their journey. I'd be curious to know where you are in your succession planning process. With that, I just want to talk about this is this is the Tim and Christine Rudo family. I use this family a lot as an example of what I do in it's fun today here at the Lansing Legislative Seminar, the same family was used in a presentation because they are so active in the community. Tim's a master farmer, just a great group. We permanently preserved their farm. And they have land in multiple counties. They have three generations that are shown there. Tim bought the land from his dad who passed in 2012, and Tim's got three sons that are looking at taking it over. And then you can see that next generation below their lands firmly preserved those small babies. A tiny baby in the young girl's arms. That land will be there for her to farm if she wants to. That's why we'd love to see farms transition however. What if opportunities come up? What if it's just Tim and Chris when they decide to retire? Who are they're going to pass the land to? What will happen to the operation? What will happen to the property? What will happen to the assets? In either case, you have to have a plan. Whether you've got kids or not, you have to have a plan. And we'd love for the Crudo family to have their kids come in and take the operation over. But if they don't, I think there's a lot of people probably on this webinar right now that would love an opportunity to partner up with an existing farmer and start farming that way. That takes some creativity and some planning from a transfer stand. So those things need to start sooner as opposed to later. On that note, like I said, minus high level. There's going to be a resource guide that'll drop in right now. Mariel, hopefully we have some questions. I'll just thank you for giving us all some of your time today. We are really excited to present these steps to you. Were all available for questions and sharing. At any point, you'll have our contact information. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. I'm going to get that resource guide. I'm to drop at the chat and hopefully we'll have some questions in there. Well, I put a question in there, will wait for other ones to come in. I was wondering Becky, how farm land preservation works in urban farms? I work with several urban farms. Do they have options for permanent farmland preservation? There aren't a lot of options. Let's talk a little bit about why. And I would be happy to continue this conversation because we have to look at things differently. With my program and most farmland preservation programs, what we look at mostly is what happens from the soil down and what is happening around that property that will make it advantageous for it to be farmed. If you take an urban piece of land, it may be prime soil, but everything around it is developed. You're going to create a farm. Do you want to permanently preserve within easement a small number of acres in a developed environment? In the building environment. I don't see permanent agricultural easements as a great solution for urban agriculture. That's my, I'd be happy to hear input pushback on that. I'm not saying that the urban agriculture is vitally important and I love the concept of it, growing food where people are putting an end to food deserts whenever you can. I love all of that. But in terms of permanence, the perpetuity piece of it I don't think is someone that has a plan or brain. I don't know if that's the best approach, but lo, anybody else to in, feel free to un, mute as well. We can gladly take things in the chat, but happy to also have a conversation. We did have a question earlier, I believe it was for Annie. If you are a brand new farm and have financial records, what do you recommend bringing to the lender meeting? I would bring current sources of income, your tax returns that show any non farm income, and then also have a business plan. Have your projection, at least outlined, of what you plan to do. The lender can certainly help assist you fill out the balance sheet. You can definitely take a stab at it and start filling it out. And bring lists of equipment that you have, implements vehicles, have all that prepared. A lot of times when you're working, I know that most of the folks on the call don't have any debt. But when there's debt out there, credit card debt vehicles, bring the current statement, so you know what the current balances are for that balance sheet. It could be probably pretty simple. Not a lot of documentation for smaller farms getting started and maybe there's a couple initial meetings with that lender. So you're sitting down with that lender and putting together a plan verbally. And then that lender will give you some homework to take home and say, okay, now go back and prepare these documents. And then a couple weeks later you come back in or you can e mail them over. But working relationship with the lender is very transparent. A lot of back and forth through e mails and text messages and we're very patient. We understand that it's a process and we're just here to help. So there's no two farms the same, and sometimes the list could be a little different from one farm to the next depending on what you are producing. I just wanted to add in regards to my farm, Len. We're undergoing a overhaul with the website and what I shared is the newest website coming out. It may look a little different to you currently, but it should be rolling out within the next few weeks just to let you know that the profile sections, they're a little different at the moment, but it's still the same population and how it will help you find. And good luck to all, let us do it a lot more efficiently than one. Well, I want to thank each of the presenters for taking the time to share with us today. We really appreciate you being here, sharing your expertise, all this great information, and to all the participants for taking time out of your day to come learn with us today.