IT IS A trend hardly unique to agriculture but it is the one that worries farm analysts the most.
Young people are staying away from farming in droves.
Fifteen years ago, there were almost 78,000 census farmers under the age of 35. They were the next generation, taking over parents’ farms and getting ready to inject new ideas and energy into the industry.
Many of them, if they have survived the last 15 years, would be getting close to the average farmer age of 52 now.
So who will follow? Last week’s census of agriculture reported that fewer than 30,000 census farmers now are younger than 35.
Read Also
Crop insurance’s ability to help producers has its limitations
Farmers enrolled in crop insurance can do just as well financially when they have a horrible crop or no crop at all, compared to when they have a below average crop
It represents a 25.1 percent drop from 2001 and now farmers younger than 35 make up just over nine percent of all farm operators.
Overall, the industry has not shrunk that much so the proportion of younger farmers for the first time has fallen below 10 percent.
“If you don’t have new entrants coming in, you don’t have new ideas,” says 25-year-old Brunkild, Man., farmer Chris Kletke.
If you don’t have young farmers, it is almost guaranteed that the industry 20 years down the road will have contracted to reflect their numbers.
It is enough to make aging farm leaders and greying farming parents wring their hands in despair.
But they shouldn’t complain to young Saskatchewan farmer Kalissa Regier, a 28-year-old hemp producer near Laird.
She suggests older farmers look in the mirror if they want to understand why their sons and daughters are turned off joining the business. All those young people hear is the negative.
“I would say for the past 10 or 15 years, young people really have been discouraged from taking over the farm,” she says. “In my parents’ generation, the baby boomers, but thankfully not my parents, who were positive, the idea that this is a business with no future has become so embedded that I’m not even sure they realize it.”
Regier is youth vice-president of the National Farmers Union – not a lobby renowned for its optimistic analysis of what is happening to farmers- but she makes a very good point.
At conferences, farm leaders often joke that passing the farm on to their children would be akin to child abuse, that farming is an addiction that drains away money as surely as does the search for crack cocaine, that a family farming tradition is a bit like a family curse.
“We hear that all the time and while I think there is a lot of opportunity out there, the mentality in the industry is that it is a loser industry,” Regier said.
“It is hard to be enthusiastic about it when that is what you hear.”
It is true that in some sectors of the business, predictions of mass bankruptcies, farmer exodus and a looming end to family farmers are the currency of speeches whose intent is to get more sympathetic government policies. But it is a damning message to young people.
Regier says when she was going to elementary and high school before attending the University of Saskatchewan, farm kids in the classes seemed optimistic.
“Farming was a good life, we considered ourselves lucky to be living on a farm,” she said. “Now, a lot of farm kids think they are losers. I think that’s a shame.”
