Finding the Next Generation

A new podcast launched this week is taking a closer look at one of agriculture’s most pressing challenges: how to replace a workforce that is aging out faster than it is being replenished.

The Ranch Workforce Project is a limited-series podcast focused on rebuilding the labor pipeline for farms and ranches by examining how operations recruit, train, and retain employees. The series looks at why long-standing workforce patterns are no longer keeping pace with modern agriculture.

The first episode features Marty Ropp, who has spent decades working in beef genetics and recently launched a nonprofit called New Acres (https://www.newacres.org/) focused on recruiting people into agricultural careers. Ropp says the traditional, family-based pipeline that once supplied labor to farms and ranches is no longer working.

“That pipeline’s drying up and dried up. And if you look out for 10 to 20 years in the future, that pipeline is maybe more dry than it is now. You go to a lot of these operations we go to, the guy working at shop is 75 years old. And he’s been there and he worked there since he was 20. And there’s no one that grew up a mile down the road to replace him. And so I look at this as a recruitment challenge — we’ve got to have new humans.”

New episodes will be released every two weeks. The limited series "The Ranch Workforce Project". is available on all major platforms under the "Ranch Stewards Podcast" and online at RanchStewards.org/podcast.