Governor Jack Markell recognizes ‘Young Farmers Loan Program’
Governor Jack Markell was on hand at the Delaware State Fair on Thursday for “Governors Day”. One event he participated in was recognizing the participants of the Young Farmers loan program.
Whether your new to the business or continuing on a family tradition, starting out as a young farmer can be tough. But that’s where the program comes in handy.
Chris Magee works on his family farm in selbyville, Delaware. Each year his farm produces about 9 million ears of sweet corn and 10 million pounds of watermelon. And this all with the help of the Delaware Young Farmers Loan program.
47 ABC spoke with Magee and he says, “Farming’s not a cake walk. We sweat, we cry. It’s a really good program to help me stay in agriculture, lets say you’re going off to college and you needed to get funding, we needed funding to go to college to stay in farming.”
Around since 2011, the program has a total of 28 young farmers. Ed Kee, program founder & secretary of agriculture for Delaware says the program really started with his own experience.
Kee tells 47 ABC, “It really started in a way with my experience 40 years ago of not having something like that to help me and so when I got the chance to at least throw out the idea it was well received and it took off from there.”
Kee says the average age of farmer in Delaware is 57 years old. But they’ve seen a lot of younger folks in their 20’s 30’s and 40’s wanting to get into it as well.
Kee tells 47 ABC, “Some of them are into farming with their family and they can use our young farmer program to branch out a little bit and by their own land and we also have people that independently get a piece of land with our program and get started farming from scratch.”
Kee says The program is funded by state appropriations. Each year the Delaware department of agriculture makes a request to state legislature. So far, they have funded everything from $2 million a year to $10 million a year.
Kee tells 47 ABC, “This is all about, at the end of the day, economic impact of agriculture and the environmental sustainability that agriculture brings to the table but also our ability to produce food. We’re really, really proud of that because that’s the future.”
For farmers who are approved, they can get a max loan of up to $500,000 and there’s 0 interest loan for 30 years. But if they participate then the land is permanently preserved by the state.
