Oregon Public Broadcasting

A nonprofit group launched a new service Tuesday to help young, beginning farmers.

Advocates liken it to the online classified site Craigslist but for the state’s next-generation of farmers.

Ethan Lindsey reports.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture says the average age of a farmer in the state is the oldest it’s ever been.

The department estimates that means more than half of the state’s ag land will change hands in the next decade.

Advocates say they hope turnover doesn’t lead to a loss of family farms.

That’s why the group Friends of Family Farmers launched a new web site to connect new farmers with resources.

Zoë Bradbury is starting her second-season as a farmer on the southern Oregon coast.

Zoë Bradbury: “I felt like I was blindfolded, and trying to turn over all these stones in my path, in order to find resources underneath them. And I just kept saying, ‘why doesn’t Oregon have some program that links beginning farmers to resources.”

Bradbury says iFarmOregon.org is a valuable resource for her now – but it would have been invaluable last year, when she was just starting her new farm.