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While the topic of farmers' access to farmland is not a new issue, contemporary conditions have made it an even greater challenge than in the past. In this reflective essay I suggest that the farmland access challenge in the U.S. means thinking outside the box of ingrained cultural values, past historical arrangements, and current conditions. Using my organization, Land For Good, I argue that persistent challenges to farmland access will be addressed best through dialogue and innovation around how farms and farmland can optimally be accessed, held, and passed on. Land For Good, a New England-based not-for-profit organization, posits a systems change framework for farmland access, tenure, and transfer. This essay explores solutions in a broad context and addresses how farm seekers, landowners, service providers, communities, and policymakers all play key roles.

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‘Regional food systems’ appears with increasing frequency in scholarly works and among food system practitioners. Yet regional food systems are understudied and undervalued. Much more attention to regionalism and regional food systems is necessary to create more sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems for all. Building from the authors’ 2010 paper, “It takes a region… Exploring a regional food systems approach: A working paper,” this greatly expanded report explores the concepts, practices, challenges, and promise of regional food systems. The report’s focus is on the Northeast U.S., a laboratory for regional food systems thinking and action, but it also describes and gives examples of regional food systems development across the country. The arguments in favor of regional approaches and explorations apply to all regions and embracing them could not be more imperative to address contemporary conditions.

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Complex projects must manage many challenges, including how to communicate about them. In this commentary, we present and assess the extension and outreach objectives, activities, challenges and outcomes of a complex, inter-disciplinary food systems research project called Enhancing Food project-defined by USDA as including research, education, and extension-EFSNE focused on the regional food system of 12 Northeast states. EFSNE's Outreach Team met the project's outreach objectives by proactively sharing project findings with multiple audiences including participating low-income communities in a variety of ways. We outline the unique framework and rationale from which multiple outreach activities were conducted during the six years of the project. We also describe challenges we faced along the way, including the tension between research and community engagement, and the translation of complex research to multiple audiences. While complex systems projects often take several years to produce results, we believe that a contextually appropriate, coordinated and meaningful ways throughout the project provides significant benefits to multiple stakeholder audiences as well as to the project itself. We believe this compilation of our outreach strategies may inform similar work in other large, integrated complex regional research projects.

Land access for new farmers and ranchers includes transfers from owners without family successors. We compare how farm seekers' needs align with the offerings of farm owners whose farm assets