Young farmers in RI are ‘trying to make a go of it’
Amy Russo
EXETER, R.I. – Maggie Cole rises to feed her cows at 6 a.m. each day.
For two hours, the 25-year-old tends to them at her Exeter farm, EMMA Acres – an acronym for Cole and her three older siblings, Elizabeth, Matthew and Alex.
By 8 a.m., she’s at her job as a receptionist at the Rhode Island Farm Bureau, where she puts in enough hours to pull in a paycheck.
Weekends aren’t about putting her feet up – that’s when she moves the cows and mucks the stalls.
“An outsider looking in is like, ‘This makes no sense. You’re not making any money, you have to work 365 days a year. Why?’ And I don’t know why except I love it,” Cole said during a walk around the farm in April.
Cole is part of a rising tide of young farmers in the state who, despite the challenges of modern farming, are making a go of it.
According to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture census, from 2017 to 2022, Rhode Island’s population of young producers – under age 35 – grew by 24.5%. That was one of the largest jumps in the nation, second only to New Jersey.
But the obstacles to making a living on a farm can be significant. Among those is the growing cost of dairy operations. Cole herself faced that reality when her farm opted to diversify its dairy herd with beef cows in 2019. Even with its membership in the Cabot Creamery Cooperative, of which most New England dairy farmers are a part, it could no longer make ends meet.
Barrier to entry
For those looking to get into farming who don’t have a working farm passed down from family, the cost of entry is steep.
In 2022, the USDA reported a single acre of Rhode Island farmland cost $17,500 on average – significantly more than any other state. Diane Lynch, president of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, said the high price of land is yet another cost hurdle for farmers.
“Part of that is because so much of our really prime agricultural land is also coastal, and is therefore priced as highpriced coastal vacation land,” Lynch said.
Despite the difficulty of making a living farming, Rhode Island is still a national leader in young farmers like those in the network.
Ken Ayers, chief of the Division of Agriculture of the state Department of Environmental Management, said “people are encouraged to farm in this state, whether it’s full-time or parttime,” even just to add to existing income.
This year, most of the 100 who’ve applied to work DEM’s farmers markets will be accepted, giving shoppers a wide array of local food.
And not everyone selling is getting their produce from a large plot. Most of the 1,054 Rhode Island farms the USDA counted in 2022 were under 50 acres.
“It’s this little society of people that are doing these farmers’ businesses, and they’re young, and they’re doing them differently than the generation before them,” Lynch said. “And they’re trying to make a go of it, and it’s inspiring.”