The generation gap yawned vastly during a recent university agriculture class, when a young man asked why older farmers are selfishly feathering their retirement rather than helping their kids get a start on the farm.
If parents would sell their land for half its value or give it to their children, more young farmers would be farming, he told a panel Jan. 16 discussing the future of farm jobs.
“Your generation acquired land for $5,000, $10,000 a quarter. It’s $80,000 now. Yet crops aren’t paying more,” he said.
In response, panel member Noreen Johns said when her generation took over a farm, they also took on the responsibility of caring for their aging parents. That is less likely with this generation, said Johns farms 2,000 acres at Zelma, Sask., with her husband.
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She added nothing says that parents have to give their children everything.
Johns, her husband and their 27-year-old son who has a job in Regina labored over whether the son could farm with them and “frankly, the economics aren’t there for him to return to the farm,” she said.
Two incomes needed
Johns said her friends are as pessimistic as her when it comes to kids returning to the farm. She said most conclude they need larger farms or risky diversification schemes to make the farms worthwhile for their children. Johns said young farming families must either forgo their 8-to-5 well-paying city jobs, or work both on the farm and in the city.
Bill Martin, an agricultural historian, said previous generations went through a similar debate. The difficulty this time is that each generation has to pay more to start farming. He also noted there are fewer people working on farms each generation.
“In 1911 Noreen Johns’s 2,000 acres would have been run not just by her and her husband but two full-time hired hands and a crew of 20 or 30 harvesters.”
He and Johns raised the issue of whether individual land ownership makes sense any more. Governments, organizations or corporations could hold the land rather than load the debt on young farmers.
Farm together
Panelist Red Williams, an animal science professor, said farming co-operatively can spread out the capital costs of land, buildings and machinery among several farmers. Also, farmers should consider investing in agriculture through inland terminals, short-line railways and intensive livestock barns, he said.
Humboldt, Sask., hog barn owner Florian Possberg said hog barns offer one way to preserve prairie agriculture. Instead of exporting raw grain to the world, farmers here can process it through livestock. There are plenty of jobs in the hog barns and value-added business that can keep young people living and working in rural communities, he said.
Possberg said when he started working in his 60-sow hog barn he was the electrician, plus the one who fed the pigs and who swept the floor.
Now the operation has an accountant, an engineer and economists, plus those who work with the animals.
“In five years our little operation will grow to $100 million of product produced.”
