Aging agriculture: Older beginning farmers struggle to find land, break into farming

Ben counts himself among farming’s “lost generation,” the people in their 30s and 40s that want to start farming, but can’t find the land, equipment, capital or support from the industry to begin. Ben was born in eastern Iowa, and his family moved near Cape Girardeau in southeast Missouri when his dad bought a few acres of land to farm on. They lost the farm during the 1980s Farm Crisis, and Barron started looking into the trades with the goal of starting his own contractor business. He came as close as walking into an advisor to talk about a small business loan. Ben can’t be blamed for a lack of effort. Over the last decade, he has applied multiple times to a beginning farmer’s program that matches farmers nearing retirement age with younger people looking to get into the business, with the goal being an eventual transfer of the land. The last time he checked, he was one of about 1,500 applicants hoping to get matched with less than 40 mentors across the Midwest for the specific program he applied for. A majority of new farmers are not fresh out of college or in their twenties. According to the Practical Farmers of Iowa’s latest membership survey, 68 percent of their aspiring farmer members are 30 or older, and 17 percent of those members are age 50 or up.