Aging Farmers

Aging Farmers

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
The graying American farmer. We all know average age of farmers is around 59 implying that farmers are dying off without replacements. I talked with Jennifer Dempsey, Director of the Farmland Information Center. "We have an aging farming population so principal operators we know are getting older with the average age of 58.3. We also know now from the total which is the 10 year ownership and transition of agricultural lands survey that non-operating agricultural land owners are also aging and are even older than our principal operators so all of our agricultural land owners are aging. I think there is actually interest among younger people and then even not so young people in agriculture so we see that beginning farmers can be of all ages and we have seen in some states according to the last agricultural census that there were actually increases in what are classified as beginning farmers. There is a growing interest, we do have an aging farmland ownership. We are probably going to have 370,000,000 acres or more transferring in the next 20 years.
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