We're seeing the loss of farmland across the United States, and that includes here in Kentucky.

Census data indicates over the last 20 years we've lost seven 10,000 farms and 1.4 million acres.

Kentucky Farm Bureau says that's not sustainable and they're making efforts to stem the tide.

Our Laura Rogers tells us more.

I grew up going with my dad and checking cows and square bale and hay and houses in the back.

It was a way of life for us in this part.

Markets wise men of Winchester wanted to continue that way of life into adulthood.

I love agriculture.

It's fully my passion.

It's why I wake up every morning at the crack of dawn to go do what I do and stay out all day.

As a young man in his early twenties day, Wiseman already has his own farm here in Clark County.

It previously belonged to former agriculture teacher Jack White, who passed away in 2022.

He sat in the front yard every day.

He thought I would do a good enough job to suit him and keep it up to his standards and up to his specs like he would want.

That means more to me than anything to know that I'm doing a good job in his eyes.

His dad said that they tried to talk him into doing something besides farming.

They couldn't talk him out.

Of it after their father's passing.

Jack's daughters reached out to Mark as wise men, asking if he wanted to purchase the land that had been in their family close to 50 years.

Even when they're gone, you still try to do the things you know would make them happy.

She says the farm, now being lovingly cared for by the next generation, would please her father.

It really warmed my heart because I knew this was a young man that my dad would have worked with and would have enjoyed the fact that he got to have the farm.

It is stories like this that are the idea behind the Kentucky Farmland Transition Initiative, recently launched by Kentucky Farm Bureau.

That's our most valuable resource that we have in agriculture is the land that we own.

If you own that land, you can be more.

Profitable, and higher profits are incentive to keep that land in the hands of active farmers.

That's what this initiative is about.

If we can keep this land in production agriculture, we're better off.

Kentucky Farm Bureau is working to preserve Prime farmland.

They forecast if current trends continue, we would lose more than half of our farmers over the next 60 years.

That's not sustainable for us here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

We have to have our farmers to feed, fuel and clothe.

The Kentucky Farmland to Transition Initiative aims to find solutions offering resource is for farm families, connecting service providers and advocating for public policy.

If there's a selling farmer and they sell it to a young or beginning farmer, there are tax credits that you can get for actually keeping that getting that to a young farmer.

Eddie Melton, as a fifth generation farmer in Webster County.

My great great grandfather actually put the farm where I live today together.

It's meaningful that you get to continue that tradition on.

He hopes his efforts will do the same.

Starting the conversation about what can be done to support generational farm families and new farmers and.

Have a discussion with them about how can we go through a transition here and keep this land in agriculture and make the subject a little easier.

More mouths to feed and less land to grow your food?

That doesn't really go hand in hand.

For Marcus Wise man.

He's proud to help supply that food and carry on the legacy of Jack White at his Winchester farm.

They tell stories every time you drive past a certain tree in the front yard.

I can see him sitting underneath it, talking to him every time you pull in and out of the gate.

He just really loved it.

She says he would love that activity is still going strong on the farm where he called home.

And I just think that would have made my daddy happy.

Sport Kentucky Edition.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thanks, Laura.

You can learn more, find resources and contact the project coordinator online at k y Farmland Transition dot com.