One of the services we offer at Illinois FarmLink is our online database of Illinois land seeker and farmland owner profiles. Whether you’re looking for land or looking for a farmer, you can create a public profile that other farmland owners and farmers can find. Our team often jokes that it’s like a dating site for the land access journey!
For any matchmaking databases to be useful, it’s important that each profile is comprehensive, clear, and up to date. This past month we embarked on a big spring-cleaning effort on our site. We contacted the creator of any profile older than six months to ensure they were still actively looking for land or a farmer. We then removed any profiles of the users we did not hear back from.
We’re happy to report that our database is now fully up to date! Going forward, we’ll repeat this same process every six months to keep ensuring the accuracy of profiles. Below we share more about how the profile system works, key details about the current farmland profiles on the site, and a note on critical mass.
The Profile System
When you create a profile on our site, anyone who visits the webpage can view parts of your profile, while key details, like contact information, are only viewable to those who have public profiles of their own.
The goal of the profile system is to get the word out there about your land search or farmland opportunity and to give you a chance to connect with farmers or farmland owners that meet your criteria. On the site, you can filter profiles by specific attributes like county, acreage, or infrastructure available for more efficient searches.
Active Profiles
We currently have 9 farmland owner and 73 land seeker profiles.
It’s common for farmlink sites to have a far greater number of land seeker profiles. This especially highlights the importance of farmland owners creating a profile (more on that below).
There’s a wide mix of profiles on our site, from the largest property at 620 acres to the smallest at 10 acres. We have farmland owners looking to provide a basic one-year lease to those looking to build a long-term partnership with a shared vision. Check out the map below to learn more about the active farmland owner profiles on the site.
Create a Profile Today!
In order for matchmaking databases to be successful in making connections, there needs to be a critical mass of profiles. So, if you’re looking for land or a farmer, we encourage you to create a profile today and tell others about Illinois FarmLink. With each additional profile on the site, more people will be encouraged to use it, and it will gain momentum.
And if you aren’t sure if you’re ready to create a profile, please reach out for an advising call. Our regional navigators can help you define your goals, assess your property’s potential for farming, and build out a search plan.
We look forward to learning more about your land or farmer search and seeing your profile on the site!
Special note: If you had a profile on the site, but missed the deadline to keep your profile active, please reach out to [email protected] with a request to reactivate your profile.