The Age of the Farmer

As a child, I remember my dad after a long day of work, picking up his guitar almost every night to play a song or two before we would all go to bed. One of the songs he would sing was an old Waylon Jennings song, "Mama's don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, don't let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks, make em be doctors and lawyers and such."  I would laugh at that song and think to myself, why would anyone not want to be a cowboy or a farmer? Isn’t that every kid's dream?

In the last 5 years, research has found the age of the farmer is increasing from 55 to 57, with 30% of farmers over the age of 75. Twenty percent of U.S. farms today are operated by those with 10 years or less of experience.(Young people on Farms)

So what would keep someone from staying on a farm and continuing to work in agriculture?  Jennifer Leavy and Naomi Hossain of the Institute of Development Study found that there are four reasons someone would move away from agriculture:

•      Youth want better education to get better jobs
•  Farming is mentally and physically challenging  
•   They don’t consider it as a future because of the lack of access to inputs and land   
• Changing norms, new opportunities to seek education and employment 

The generation gap between the farmers of yesterday and farmers today continues to grow, where less and less know about farming, leaving the older farmers with no one to take their place. So whether or not you are involved in agriculture consider what you can do to increase agriculture awareness and job opportunities. As the age of the farmer goes up and the world population continues to rise, the need for agriculture based workers needs to be rising with it. Jobs are waiting to be filled.