Who will produce our food and steward the land in the coming years? According to the USDA the average age of farmers is about 60 years old. Within the next couple of decades over 50 percent of America’s farmland will change hands. Rural America is continuing to lose its population and is now less than 16 percent of the country’s total. Folks this is an unprecedented crisis and opportunity for farmers throughout our country!

I was born into a ranching family and like many others was told that success was to get a college degree and a job in the city that paid better than farming. Farming is often looked down upon as the last resort for young men and women. When was the last time you heard a parent boasting that their child wanted to be a farmer, or better yet when such a statement met with joy from their peers? I can count on one hand the number of people under 50 years old that returned to our greater community around Medina County to be farmers.

What has caused all of this? The list is immense, but there are some reasons that really catch my attention. Farm policy and specifically the subsidized agricultural industry doesn’t make life any better for farmers or consumers. These policies just simply need to be written off of the books. I have already written about this in a previous blog so I’m not going to harp on it any further. Another issue is the generational shift of land or land transfer. I’m talking about privately owned farmland, not public property. Poor planning or a simple lack of not planning for the next generation has led to this crisis. In our community more and more of the landscape is being purchased by wealthy folks who view it not as a productive agricultural landscape, but as a personal recreation area, which has huge costs to our rural communities associated with it. To clear the air when I speak of productive agricultural landscapes I’m not talking about monoculture crop fields inundated with chemicals, I’m talking about farms that are ecologically sound and benefit the greater community as much as the individual farmer and landowner. The second issue is the lack of information or knowledge transfer. Most young folks simply don’t know how to farm, much less steward the land. Joel Salatin, writer and farmer, said in no simpler terms that “without the farmer’s effort, a farm ceases to be a farm.” We need to retain talented, young people in the community who are willing to learn to embrace and care for the land. “Brain drain” has wreaked it’s havoc on rural american communities for decades. Even with all of these societal prejudices, the elephant in the room and number one reason young folks don’t return to farming is economic. There are tremendous economic hurdles to farming, but let’s all be real and know that young people follow money. We all do because we know that money follows opportunities, and most farmers don’t earn a living wage. Thus, as a result most farmers don’t want their children to follow in their footsteps. I’m fully convinced that this loss in economic opportunity is a direct result of consumers who are disconnected from their food. No one made American’s leave their kitchen. We all became dependent on the malnourished industrialized food system and giant supermarkets. It was an active consumer and cultural shift throughout the past 50 or so years. The average farmer in the past century received nearly 40 percent of the consumer dollar and now it’s less than 11 percent and continuing downward.

Why would anyone bother farming if this is the expected template? I’m here to tell you there is a better way to farm and bring back the vibrancy of our rural landscapes and communities. Together we can bring people back to the farm. Stay tuned because I will talk about that in the next blog.