Farming isn't high on the list of desirable occupation choices with young people today. If you ask around, one of the most common answers that you'll likely hear is that they want to be famous when they grow up, by vlogging or doing Youtube etc.
It's estimated that as much as 75 percent of young kids today would prefer an online career making videos, than working a more traditional job.
Despite the inevitable, many farmers still don't have a retirement plan ready and they dread the day that the transition finally comes.
More farmers than ever now are choosing to keep their land even after they retire, and for most they don't necessarily retire so much as they slow down or downsize their way of living. Some say that they never plan to retire. However, there are still many around though that are looking for someone suitable to take over the farm for them and that means there is a great opportunity for those who might be interested in working in this industry.
A growing number of farmers today are looking to either rent or sell their property to younger farmers who are outside of their immediately family. They want to have someone new take it over completely, or farm the land for them etc. But farmland is expensive and many young people cannot afford to make that sort of investment and often the land will be sold to the highest bidder who might not even be interested in farming.
In Canada, it's estimated that more than 90 percent of farmers don't have a retirement plan ready, they haven't planned the transition out yet and that leaves those farms at risk. And the average age of principal farm operators in the U.S. is now estimated to be 58 years old. This is almost a decade older than the average age of a farmer back in the early 1980s.
There are also far fewer farmers than there were even 20 or 30 years ago.
Smaller farms have been pressured over the years to expand, which sometimes meant buying out their neighbors or friends, to try and compete with the larger agriculture players. In 2015, it's estimated that 51 percent of farm production came from large farms that had at least $1 million in sales. Compare that 51 percent to only 31 percent that was reportedly seen back in 1991. The expansion of those farms with thousands of acres is said to have come at the expense of smaller and more mid-size farm operations.
Many farmers don't have their next step figured out, the rapidly increasing land and operation costs mean that there are a number of farms at risk. But they aren't left without options.
To help, you can now find various online services, and land matching programs etc, that are trying to link the two groups together. The various services and programs available are aimed at helping those aspiring farmers out there connect with someone who wants to pass their land on to an individual that is going to continue to homestead and take good care of it.
Small and mid-size farms are vital for offering competition in the market and they often promote arguably far superior farming methods than that which can be observed with more large-scale, factory farm operations. They might also be more likely to provide higher quality goods and perhaps this is why supermarkets continue to struggle to meet their needs for local produce.
The daily life of farming might not be as flashy as the trending section of Youtube, but those who have dedicated themselves to working the land and growing for others have provided much needed competition for the people, and they've helped to promote the overall health and well-being of communities.
