A Community of Practice Around “Agricultural Motels”

Context

In recent years, how the next generation of farmers establishes themselves have undergone major changes. While family farm transfers remain important, more and more new agricultural enterprises are being created outside the family context. These “non-family” farm transfers, however, come with their own set of challenges—especially when it comes to access to agricultural assets and financing. In addition to the existing support practices for new farmers (such as farm-matching services and agricultural business incubators), a new model has recently emerged in Québec: the “agricultural motel.” The mission of these projects is to provide shared production infrastructures in order to host and support farming operations. Like other innovative approaches, agricultural motels also face challenges—such as gaining recognition, clarifying their identity, strengthening their operational models, and ensuring long-term sustainability.

Project Objectives

Through a co-construction approach centred on a community of practice, this project aims to support the development and sustainability of agricultural motels in Québec. It will do so by building a detailed profile of existing initiatives, their target users, and their current and potential host environments.

The project’s goal is therefore to establish a community of practice dedicated to the issues surrounding agricultural motels. This community will be fueled by knowledge transfer, the sharing of practical tools, and activities designed to foster collective intelligence.

What is an agricultural motel?

Here is the definition recently adopted by four organizations leading these emerging initiatives in Québec’s agricultural landscape:

“An agricultural motel is an organization (with varying legal status) whose mission is to bring together, on a single site, several tenant farm businesses—or different relatively autonomous divisions of one social enterprise—while making shared production infrastructure and/or equipment available to them, to facilitate agricultural and agri-food business start-ups.”