WILLIAMSTOWN — As first-time farmers struggle to find affordable land and older farmers look for ways to keep family farmland in agriculture, Williamstown has created a new fund to help preserve farmland for future generations.

“As a farmer in town, I get excited whenever there is land conservation going on,” said Brian Cole, owner of Bigfoot Farm and a member of the Williamstown Agricultural Commission.

“Land, being a finite resource, once it moves out of agriculture, it's unlikely to move back.”

The $25,000 fund, financed with money from Williamstown's existing open-space preservation fund, could be used to help farmers assess the value of their land, or to meet the requirements for other state programs.

As the fund grows, it could also be put toward buying the development rights of a piece of farmland — limiting the property to agriculture and often lowering property taxes for the farmers that own or lease it.

Sarah Gardner, chair of the Agricultural Commission, said that the commission aims to step into the role that community institutions used to play as advocates for farmers.

“It's really important to have Agricultural Commissions because they are the first point of contact for farmers,” she said. “Every town needs that if we are going to keep farming in Massachusetts.”

Last fall, Gardner approached the Williamstown Community Preservation Committee with a proposal to transfer funds into an account managed by the commission. After months of deliberation, the fund was put to a vote and passed by Williamstown voters in May.

To identify where the money might be best spent, Gardner and the Commission will draft a Farmland Action Plan this coming fall.

“That means mapping all the farmland and talking with every farmland owner to ascertain what farmland is threatened,” Gardner said. “Eighty percent of the farmland in Berkshire County is not protected.”

For farmers like Cole, the preservation of farmland is more than a financial question — it’s an existential one.

“We don’t know what the landscape is going to look like, how much local and regional demand there’s going to be for food,” he said. “Land conservation and protecting farmland is a very forward thinking kind of thing.”

Cole said that while other farmers in Williamstown are not yet familiar with the fund, they are well aware of the challenges it seeks to address.

“There’s a lot of chatter about helping young, beginning farmers get on farmland,” he said.

To ensure that farmland is available in the future, however, means safeguarding the land older farmers own now.

“We’re on the cusp of a generational transfer of land,” he said. “I’m talking about 60 years from now, or 100 years from now, making sure that there [are] opportunities available for people to keep farming.”