![\"Bob](\"http:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/farmer.png\")
<\/a>Bob Hawthorn, 84, still works his 2,000 acre farm in Iowa. (From the Kansas City Star)<\/p><\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.kansascity.com\/2013\/07\/09\/4335760\/the-aging-american-farmer-who.html<\/a><\/p>\n The American farmer is graying in the center.<\/p>\n According to the U.S. census, the average age of the U.S. farmer is 57, and the fastest growing age group is those over age 65. That demographic shift puts the agriculture industry on the precipice of a transition.<\/p>\n Though many farmers are clearly working well into the traditional retirement years, thousands of farms soon will be changing hands. How that occurs could reshape the industry that drives much of the economy in middle America.<\/p>\n Working longer<\/p>\n Working beyond retirement is a fairly common refrain these days \u2014 but farmers seem to work longer than most. In the last Agriculture Census, 25 percent of all farm operators were over age 65 compared with 5 percent of the overall U.S. work force.<\/p>\n Why do farmers keep working? For one thing, modern machinery makes it easier to work longer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more you use your mind rather than your back, so you can go longer,\u201d said Mike Duffy, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.<\/p>\n Duffy said there\u2019s also an economic incentive. Many farmers are making more money today than just about any time in their careers thanks to higher yields and high grain prices.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s something else about farmers. In surveys of farmers in Iowa, Duffy has learned that regardless of the money or new technology, some farmers will just never quit.<\/p>\n \u201cFarmers are farmers,\u201d Duffy said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s who they identify themselves as. They\u2019ll leave horizontal.\u201d<\/p>\n Bob Hawthorn is that kind of farmer. At 84, Hawthorn\u2019s hands and face are weathered. This year, spring came late, so on a bright April afternoon he was in a hurry to get corn and soybeans planted on his 2,000-acre farm in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.<\/p>\n Hawthorn braced himself against the wind in the back of his red pickup and unstrung the top of a bag of seed corn. After nearly 60 years on the farm, he said, neighbors ask how long he plans to continue.<\/p>\n \u201cThey keep bugging me,\u201d Hawthorn said. \u201cThey say, \u2018When are you gonna quit?\u2019 I think I\u2019ll tell \u2019em I won\u2019t quit farming till all hell freezes over. Something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The farm was started by his great-grandfather, Trapper Hawthorn, in the late 1870s. Bob Hawthorn left for a brief career in aerospace before returning to Iowa in 1955 to farm with his father, Fred, who worked on the farm into his 90s and lived to be 98 years old. Longevity runs in the family.<\/p>\n But after four generations, the Hawthorn family farm will come to an end. He has had foster children, but he never had biological children and never married. No one is lined up to take over the farm, but then, Hawthorn has no plans to quit, either.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d be bored not having anything to do,\u201d Hawthorn said. \u201cI\u2019ve also noticed that farmers, when they retire, buy a house in town and die of a heart attack about in the next year. It seems like farmers have to keep going or they just fade away.\u201d<\/p>\n Psychologist and retired farmer Mike Rosmann calls it the \u201cagrarian imperative,\u201d the drive to keep farming even when your body might be ready to quit. In fact, Rosmann said, studies show over half of aging farmers don\u2019t have a will or an estate plan.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it reflects perhaps a denial of the fact that somebody\u2019s got to take over and I need to have a plan for that,\u201d Rosmann said.<\/p>\n Turmoil in transitions<\/p>\n Randy Hertz, a financial planner with Hertz Farm Management, in Nevada, Iowa, says even as the average age of farmers creeps ever upward, few families make all the plans they could for smooth transitions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty ominous the number of farmers that plan to retire in the next five to 10 years,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cSome of them have no plan, and the default succession plan is, well, I guess we\u2019ll just rent it to somebody in the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2008 Iowa Farm and Rural Life poll found that 42 percent of farmers surveyed said they planned to retire in the next five years. But Paul Lasley, an Iowa State University sociologist who conducts the poll, said it\u2019s tough to define retirement with farmers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe retirement process for many farmers may take years, even a decade or so,\u201d Lasley said. \u201cThey slowly phase out of farming, and allow their adult children, who are often middle age, to take over, but they remain somewhat involved to \u2018make sure the kids do it right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s how it is working out for the Arganbright family in the western Iowa town of Panora.<\/p>\n Jim Arganbright, 83, three years ago started renting his cropland to his son Tom, the only one of his eight children who farms full time. Now, all Jim Arganbright has to worry about is the livestock \u2014 and he doesn\u2019t have too much of that.<\/p>\n \u201cI only have 12 cows and a bull and eight calves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tom Arganbright farms his parents\u2019 160 acres, several other rented fields and his own farm \u2014 in all, about 1,500 acres. He bought some of his acres from one of his uncles.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just any ground you\u2019re purchasing, it\u2019s part of the original Arganbright land, and it\u2019s up to you to keep hold of it through good times and bad and be able to pass it along to the next generation,\u201d Tom Arganbright said. One of his five children currently farms with him.<\/p>\n Though Jim Arganbright is no longer farming, he said he has not yet established a formal plan for how ownership of his land will transfer to the next generation, something he knows he ought to do. He expects his children to keep it in the family.<\/p>\n Farmers in waiting<\/p>\n More farmers staying on the farm into their old age is one reason younger farmers struggle to find their place.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not short of young people who want to farm,\u201d said Duffy, at Iowa State. \u201cWe\u2019re short of old people who want to move over.\u201d<\/p>\n One reason farmers are working long past the age when others might retire is that their golden years turned out to be boom years.<\/p>\n \u201cOften they\u2019re the only people that have enough money that they can keep doing it and can keep buying land that comes up for sale,\u201d Rosmann said.<\/p>\n The ability to buy land is a big hurdle keeping many young people from entering the agriculture industry as producers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way I\u2019ll ever be able to own my own ranch,\u201d said Bo Bigler, 25, a graduate student at Colorado State University. He\u2019ll graduate at the end of the summer with a master\u2019s degree in beef management.<\/p>\n \u201cThe price to buy into it, it\u2019s too much,\u201d Bigler said. \u201cThe only way that somebody can get into it is if a ranch was handed down to them, unless they\u2019re millionaires to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2011 survey<\/a> from the National Young Farmers Coalition showed access to land and capital to be the single biggest factors keeping young people from getting into farming or ranching. The results also indicated young people were concerned about the environment and interested in small-scale operations.<\/p>\n In Longmont, Colo., Eva Teague, 31, has learned how difficult it can be to start a financially sound pig farm. Teague is a grad school dropout turned farmer, originally from the East Coast. Jaded with academia, she moved to Colorado and began working as a farm apprentice. She bought her first pigs a couple of years ago and now leases 15 acres at the base of the Rocky Mountains.<\/p>\n \u201cDidn\u2019t have that much cash, so I paid for feed with the credit card just to get going,\u201d Teague said.<\/p>\n Right now, her biggest challenge, like that of many other young farmers, is access to capital. She recently secured a low-interest loan from the federal Farm Service Agency<\/a>, but it\u2019s not enough to get her business off the ground completely. Teague still spends her days on the farm, and every evening working full time as a waitress. Next year she\u2019s taking a big leap, quitting her off-farm job and relying on her farm income to sustain herself.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of young people want to work outside in sort of a \u2018farm camp\u2019 fun experience,\u201d Teague said. \u201cThere are fewer people who would like to work really hard, like 50-60 hours a week for not a lot of money, which is what working on a farm is.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though small farmers aren\u2019t making large profits, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the largest increase in farm numbers by far is for small farms, with annual sales less than $10,000 a year.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.kansascity.com\/2013\/07\/09\/4335760\/the-aging-american-farmer-who.html The American farmer is graying in the center. According to the U.S. census, the average age of the U.S. farmer is 57, and the fastest growing age group is those over age 65. That demographic shift puts the … Continue reading