Minnesota Awards Highly Competitive Beginning Farmer Equipment Grants

A new grant program from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, created to help new farmers with the cost of purchasing needed equipment and infrastructure, awarded 97 grants totaling $856,833 in its first year. Demand for the Beginning Farmer Equipment and Infrastructure Grant far outstripped legislative funding for the grant, with 1,100 eligible applicants requesting $18.6 million from the grant program. Individual awards of up to $20,000 are reimbursing beginning farmers in Minnesota for a wide variety of equipment and infrastructure purchase costs, such as fencing, tractors, livestock chutes, specialty crop equipment, and infrastructure construction and improvements.