Farmland Inventory Project

BCDI’s Farmland Inventory is designed to ensure that working lands within the town of Bowdoinham remain available for farming activities and preservation of the town’s rural character.

This effort, with financial support from the Sewall Foundation, started in the spring of 2016 with a goal to understand how much agricultural land is located within the town and how it is currently being used. The project began with a single landowner, whose more than a dozen properties total 1,000 acres. With support from Land For Good, BCDI convened a group of members and volunteers to understand these properties including historic uses, potential uses, access to utilities, boundaries, and current tax basis.  For more on the project history, see ‘Project History’ below.  

The project is now focused on linking farmers to the town’s available agricultural land. BCDI’s Farmland Inventory website provides a way for farmland owners and farmland seekers to meet! 

Bowdoinham is located in the unceded territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Wabanaki people have stewarded the beautiful land we now call Maine for thousands of years and continue to today. BCDI stands in solidarity with Wabanaki land, food, water, and cultural sovereignty. Acknowledging this history is one small step of reckoning with the past and the ongoing harm of colonization, and is part of a larger journey from ignorance towards appreciation and repair.

How to Get Started

Project History & Overview

At the start of this project, if a farmer wanted to find land in Bowdoinham they would more than likely have a conversation with BCDI Founder, David Whittlesey. David, as an active and engaged member of the Bowdoinham community, would draft up an email or pick-up the phone to connect with others in town in an effort find out who might have the land a farmer was looking for.

As the project formalized, an overarching goal became clear: the need to institutionalize the knowledge of working lands in Bowdoinham in order to protect and improve the ability of next generation farmers to find land and to keep agricultural land in use.

Farmland succession, and use of all farmland in Bowdoinham, creates immediate opportunities and challenges. If we are to maintain the character of our town, continue to be a provider of healthy food, and a steward of the environment, it is essential that we help provide landowners the tools necessary to manage the future of their land. The Farmland Inventory Project aims to do this by facilitating the connections of landowners and farmers. By increasing the land base in production, we support the creation of new jobs, increase access to healthy local food, and strengthen the health of our local economy.

HOW DOES THE FARMLAND INVENTORY WEBSITE HELP CONNECT FARMERS AND FARMLAND?

If landowners want to make their property available for use by a farmer, then with this website, they are able to set-up their own property listing with the support of Land For Good.  Likewise, farm seekers are invited to create a profile where they can detail the type of farmland they are seeking.  Our goal is to make this searchable database a match-making site, connecting needs while preserving farmland.  Maine Farmland Trust’s program, Farm Link, connects farmland owners with farmers seeking farm land. Our project complements the Farm Link program by offering a hyper-local point of connection for land owners and land seekers. We expect our Farmland Inventory to serve as a model that could be used by other farming communities across the state. Click the button below to check out our Farmland Inventory website for more details!