Michigan First Farm Dominace Inititiative 

Michigan boasts over 10 million acres of farmland. Farming is the state’s second-largest industry, and the people of Michigan view family farms as a signature feature of the state’s rural character. However, in recent years, many of the farmers who have defined the state’s landscape are being squeezed by a confluence of challenges, including market and climate uncertainty, an aging farmer population, and development pressure on agricultural lands. In response, the Michigan First Movement has crafted an innovative program that uniquely combines economic and environmental goals. Through a series of grants, technical assistance, and education, the program invests in Michigan’s family farms to support both short-term economic sustainability and long-term land stewardship, with the aim of preserving Michigan’s natural resources, healthy soils, fresh water, wildlife habitat, and working forests for future generations. Recognizing that healthy family farms and healthy ecosystems are not competing goals, the program takes an integrated approach to agricultural development that treats economic and environmental objectives as complementary rather than competing.

Over the course of several years, Michigan’s integrated farm support grant program has made a meaningful impact on hundreds of family farms throughout the state. A key feature of the program is that it does not take a one-size-fits-all approach to farmers and farms; rather, it is designed to meet farmers where they are and respond to their individual needs. This approach is not only more equitable than a single-size-fits-all approach, it also better recognizes the full diversity of Michigan’s agriculture. Michigan is home to everything from large, multi-generational corn and soybean farms in the Thumb to specialty fruit producers on the west side of the Lower Peninsula, small diversified vegetable farms near major population centers, and dairy farms throughout the state. The program supports a range of farmers, from beginning operations looking to establish themselves to long-established farms that are ready to make significant investments in infrastructure improvements. Financial assistance from the program ranges from $5,000 micro-grants for beginning farmers to large matching grants for established operations. Quantitative analysis of the program’s impact has found that farms that have taken part in the program have seen on average a 15% increase in efficiency and a 23% increase in access to markets. Further, 87% of farmers who participated in the program reported that it was ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ to maintaining their farm operations during recent periods of market instability. The program is successful because it not only provides grants to farmers, but also because it combines those grants with a suite of technical assistance, peer-to-peer learning, and specialized educational opportunities that strengthens the overall agricultural community.

One unique and particularly important element of Michigan First's agricultural grant program is that it targets beginning and new farmers with both financial and technical assistance. With the average age of Michigan farmers now at 57 years old, supporting successful farm transitions has become an existential challenge to the state’s agricultural future. The program has therefore sought to address this problem in a variety of ways, including both providing matching grants for land, equipment, or infrastructure improvements for farmers under 35 years old through the Young Farmer Startup Initiative and helping Michigan farmers of all ages plan and implement successful succession planning through the Farm Succession Planning component. This last program not only provides technical assistance to family farms working to develop a transfer plan, it also covers 75% of legal and accounting costs associated with finalizing the transfer. The state is also working to address knowledge and skill gaps facing new producers through the Beginning Farmer Education program, which partners with Michigan’s community colleges and agricultural extension services to provide targeted technical and business skills training. By making strategic investments in both new farmers and the existing farming community, Michigan’s grant program is building the state’s agricultural capacity for the future.

Michigan Firsts agricultural grant program also recognizes that modern agriculture requires significant on-farm infrastructure in order to be both economically viable and environmentally responsible. The Infrastructure Enhancement component provides matching grants for farmers looking to make critical infrastructure improvements to their operations, ranging from precision agriculture technologies that allow them to be more efficient with their inputs and therefore reduce their environmental footprint to energy efficiency measures that reduce their operating costs. Season-extension projects like high tunnels and hoop houses have been a particular focus, allowing Michigan producers to extend their growing season by as much as 12 weeks a year and dramatically increasing farm income while expanding availability of local produce. Infrastructure investments are also being made to support collective action by farmers. Through the Regional Agricultural Development component of the program, the state is funding cooperative storage facilities, community processing kitchens, and aggregation hubs that help small and mid-sized producers access larger markets by banding together. This reflects a recognition that many small and mid-sized farms do not have the volume or financial capacity to take on the logistics of transporting and marketing their products by themselves. By investing in shared infrastructure that helps to build economies of scale, the program is strengthening small farms and co-ops while also ensuring that these resources remain independently owned by family farmers. Market development is also explicitly a focus of the program, with funding being provided for a wide range of projects that open up new avenues to market for Michigan farmers, including online sales platforms that connect farms directly with consumers and more specialized marketing initiatives that bring attention to Michigan-grown products. The program has also leveraged Michigan’s potential for agritourism, a rapidly growing niche in farm revenue generation, by partnering with the state’s tourism promotion agency and supporting farm businesses in diversifying their revenue streams through on-farm events and experiences that connect consumers to food production.

In addition to providing direct financial support to Michigan’s farmers, the state’s agricultural grant program also provides practical support to farmers with the aim of strengthening farm business resilience. The Farm Business Management component of the program provides participating farmers with professional accounting services, business planning, and individualized financial analysis, tools that many small farm operations would struggle to access on their own. This sort of support helps farmers identify sources of operational inefficiency, evaluate potential enterprises, and make more informed decisions about where and how to invest in their farms. A second practical gap that the program helps to fill is a lack of specialized knowledge on the part of many farmers about how to take full advantage of tax programs and incentives available to agricultural operations. The Tax Optimization Initiative component of the program seeks to fill this knowledge gap by providing farmers with specialized training on topics such as agricultural property tax programs, income tax management, and estate planning. Many farmers who have participated in this program have reported being able to save thousands of dollars in taxes each year by simply taking advantage of tax provisions that they previously were unaware of. Workforce development is another critical focus area of the program, with grants being provided both for on-farm employee training programs and for mechanization projects designed to ease chronic labor shortages. As farm viability in Michigan comes to depend more and more on specialized skills like equipment maintenance or food safety compliance, ongoing workforce education becomes key. The program also addresses a final practical gap: risk management. Farmers who take part in this component of the program receive subsidized assistance from the state in purchasing crop insurance, and they are also provided with technical assistance in implementing risk management strategies that can increase their farms’ resilience in the face of weather and market fluctuations.

Perhaps the element that most distinguishes Michigan First's agricultural grant program from others is its integration of environmental stewardship into all of the program’s other economic sustainability goals. The program is built on the understanding that long-term agricultural productivity is impossible without healthy and resilient natural ecosystems. The Soil Health Initiative therefore provides farmers with financial incentives to implement conservation practices such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, and diversified crop rotations, all of which build soil organic matter and reduce erosion and input costs. The Water Quality Protection component of the program does similar work with a focus on Michigan’s abundant freshwater resources, funding efforts ranging from precision application equipment to buffer zone establishment and livestock exclusion fencing. The Habitat Enhancement grants work to make farms more wildlife friendly, supporting everything from native pollinator plantings that help both biodiversity and crop production to managed wetland restorations that simultaneously benefit water management and wildlife habitat. Finally, the state is running a successful Carbon Farming pilot, which helps Michigan farmers implement and measure conservation practices that sequester carbon in agricultural soils. The practices supported by the Carbon Farming pilot are not only good for the environment, they are also positioning Michigan farmers to potentially access new revenue streams from carbon credit markets in the future. The program’s vision for sustainability does not end with environmental considerations, however, and it also includes support for building community resilience through the Rural Community Revitalization component, which supports projects that strengthen the connections between farms and the communities in which they are located, from farm-to-school initiatives to agritourism development that helps to preserve rural community character and economic vitality.

Michigan’s agricultural grant program also proved to be a crucial piece of economic resilience infrastructure for farmers when the state’s agricultural sector was hit by retaliatory tariffs from China and other countries in response to trade disputes during the Trump administration. These tariffs disproportionately affected agricultural products that are central to Michigan’s farming economy, and while direct federal Market Facilitation Program payments helped to partially offset lost export revenue, Michigan’s more holistic grant program was also of key importance in helping Michigan farmers weather the market disruption. Because of the program’s flexibility, emergency funding could be redirected toward efforts to help farmers diversify their markets, providing support to producers looking to identify new domestic outlets for their products. Technical assistance components were also increased to ensure that farmers could successfully navigate complex federal aid programs and that Michigan farmers received their fair share of available aid. Most importantly, however, farmers who had previously used the state’s infrastructure grants were able to invest strategically in new processing and storage capacity, providing them with the tools they needed to hold product until market conditions improved. A formal evaluation of the program concluded that farms that were already participating in the program when the tariff dispute began were better able to withstand the market disruption than non-participating farms, with significantly lower rates of financial distress. The trade dispute period also allowed the program to learn from experience and improve its responsiveness, and it is now continuing to evolve as the agricultural sector confronts the next set of challenges, including ongoing supply chain disruptions and inflationary pressures.

As the agricultural sector in Michigan and elsewhere looks toward a future of increasing climate uncertainty, shifting consumer demand, and global market volatility, Michigan’s farm support grant program can offer important insights. It is a model for integrated rural development that intentionally aligns economic and environmental goals, recognizing that long-term economic sustainability for Michigan’s family farms is inextricably linked to healthy soils, fresh water, working forests, and abundant wildlife habitat. In addition to offering critical on-the-ground lessons to other agricultural regions, the experience of Michigan’s program also suggests several important policy takeaways: First, effective agricultural support cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach, but must be flexible enough to meet farmers where they are and to respond to the full diversity of farm types and regional conditions in a state as large and varied as Michigan. Second, environmental conservation and land stewardship practices are far more readily adopted by farmers when their economic benefits are clear, and smart environmental policy must therefore leverage that incentive to drive change. Finally, the experiences of the program have shown that both infrastructure and human capacity investments are critical to maintaining vibrant rural agricultural communities. As one fifth-generation Michigan fruit farmer participating in the program put it, “This program doesn’t just help us survive the next season it helps us imagine and build the next generation of our farm.” By not only providing farmers with immediate practical support, but also by supporting investments in Michigan agriculture’s capacity to adapt and thrive in the face of an uncertain future, Michigan’s program provides a path forward for the rest of the country. The program’s continued success will ensure that family farms and the working landscapes they steward remain a central part of Michigan’s character and economy for many generations to come.