Commentary: Nurturing the next generation of farmers

When it comes to farming, it seems the critics always have the easy answer. They portray this line of work as if every day brings blue skies and no worries. The reality is the farming business comes with a fair share of challenges; chief among them is the unpredictability of weather and markets. Anything can and will happen. Most kids don't return to the farm, which is evident by the average age of the American farmer. It's 58 years old and it keeps creeping upward. This is not a good trend for American agriculture and something that should worry all of us. If we lose our farmers then we lose our ability to grow our own national food supply. We need the next generation to be involved in production agriculture. But we cannot expect them to even consider it when this way of life seems to always be under attack, making an already challenging profession even more difficult. Contending with bad weather and bad markets pales sometimes to the uncertainty that comes out of Washington, D.C., through tax policies, regulations, and the threat of policymakers arbitrarily cutting the very tools that farmers need to survive hard times: crop insurance and farm policy.