NORTHEAST Study looks at factors in success of new farmers

Researchers are looking to understand problems faced by new farmers.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- When Michael Geci-Black started farming part time two years ago, he struggled to meet deadlines for growing and selling his vegetables. Like most beginners, Geci-Black had to decide how much to charge for his crops and where to distribute them.
"It's like taking a big jigsaw puzzle and trying to put it all together," said Geci-Black, a 42-year-old doctor who grows specialty vegetables on 140 acres in Cherry Valley, about 50 miles west of Albany.
To figure out what makes a new farm succeed, researchers are surveying farmers in the Northeast about how their decisions and experiences affected their profit margin and way of life.
Unlike their ancestors, farmers today face a wealth of options when starting their business, ranging from using holistic farming to selling their products on the Internet.
"There's a whole lot of change that goes on in early businesses and we're trying to capture some of that," said Sue Ellen Johnson, of the New England Small Farm Institute in Belchertown, Mass., which is conducting the study. "We are hoping to get some sense of what people are trying to see what works and what doesn't quite come together."
The goal is to give prospective and novice farmers the tools to succeed in an industry transformed by technology and to ensure the viability of future farms as older farmers leave the fields.
About 400 questionnaires have been sent to farmers of all stripes -- dairy farmers, vegetable growers, livestock tenders -- from Maine to West Virginia. The survey, which targets people who began farming since 1992, aims to track the evolution of new farms by determining the type of land used, how crops are rotated and what business strategies work.