Carroll, Ohio – Abe Bluck studies business in college and hauls grain and operates farm machinery in his spare time.
He wants to run his own farm just like his family once did. But his grandfather had to sell the family farm in the early 1980s to pay off debt, and Bluck is struggling to return to the land in a changing agriculture industry.
“Land prices are high, and I don’t have much capital,” said the 21-year-old junior at Ohio University.
“It’s proven to be kind of difficult, but I’m making some progress.”
The opportunities for beginning farmers are dwindling as the cost of farmland goes up – it was a record $1,900 per acre nationwide last year – and established farmers hold on to their property well beyond normal retirement age.
Young farmers rare
In the past two decades, the number of farm operators under age 35 dropped from 16 percent of all farmers to 6 percent, or 123,059 out of about 2 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The revitalization of rural America depends, in large part, on reversing that trend,” said Traci Bruckner, assistant director of rural policy for the Center for Rural Affairs, based in Lyons, Neb.
The shrinking opportunities are changing the profile of future farmers.
The next generation will include those who grew up on the largest, most successful farms. Yet it also will be filled with part-time farmers; those who get into small niche markets such as raising hormone-free beef cattle, growing organic produce or operating vineyards; and middle-aged career changers with business experience.
“We have people in their 40s coming back to farming,” said John Baker, administrator of the Beginning Farmer Center at Iowa State University and president of the National Farm Transition Network.
“Many of them come back with some good business skills and some capital.”
To keep farmland from being gobbled up by larger farms or sold to developers, more than two dozen states have been helping young farmers get started, and bills are pending in Congress that would provide $25 million a year in grants to train and mentor beginning farmers and ranchers, and help them get credit.
Matchmaking programs
Operating in 25 states, the National Farm Transition Network pairs beginning farmers, often young, with established farmers on the verge of retirement.
The matchmaking gives young farmers a chance to get into farming without having to spend a lot of money, to avoid financially fatal rookie mistakes, and then come up with a financial arrangement that allows them to take over the farm.
Some matchmaking programs are designed simply to get a novice started in farming, not necessarily to take over the farm of a mentor.
Caterer Amy Forrest, 43, wants to grow lettuce, cabbages and other vegetables for a living on the family farm near Mechanicsburg, Ohio.
Her mentor, Guy Ashmore, 48, who raises vegetables, poultry and cattle near Wilmington, Ohio, has visited to advise her how to lay out crops and which ones are best to start with. He has shared his records with her so she knows how much money she can expect to make.
The biggest benefit so far? Ashmore helped her set up a computer program to keep track of the business.
“It’s fun to grow stuff, but you’ve got to figure out if you’re making money at it,” Forrest said.
