Incubator Farms as Beginning Farmer Support

Incubator farms are a fairly new model developing across North America to address barriers to beginning farmers, including access to land, capital, and credit, and opportunities to learn and develop skills in farm business planning. The number of incubator farms is increasing nationally. A sub-sample of existing incubator farm programs are described and compared side by side, providing evidence of the variation in program design. Extension may serve alternative roles, beyond the educator, in design and development of these programs