For the better part of a decade, Joel Talsma’s career path led him away from the family farm. Like many rural kids, he yearned for a steady, salaried position—anything but the financial uncertainties and un relenting work that his father and grandfather endured on their land in southwestern Minnesota.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in agricultural education and spending time in the National Guard, including a tour of duty in Iraq, he became a grain buyer at a large agricultural coop in St. Paul. But Talsma found the desk job and life in the suburbs unfulfilling, and realized he longed to work the land. Today, he’s right back in the house where he grew up. The 36-year-old farms roughly 480 acres full time, including some of his father’s land.
“Those census numbers should be a call to action,” says Sophie Ackoff, co-executive director of theNational Young Farmers Coalition, a 3,000 member organization with 50 grassroots chapters across the nation. “The recent small uptick in the number of young farmers, however hopeful, is not nearly enough to replace those who are retiring. The country needs more young producers to ensure a healthy food system. We have a crisis of attrition as farmers retire with no successor in place.” Her organization has found that only 10% of farmers surveyed had succession plans. Which raises the question: When this older generation is gone, who will feed us? According to land use experts at the coalition, the country could face food shortages.
Sophie Ackoff"We have a crisis of attrition as farmers retire with no successors in place."
Sophie Ackoff
“We have a crisis of attrition as farmers retire with no successors in place.”
Nate Ryan
Many of Talsma’s relatives and childhood friends joined the ranks of young people who leave the farm. “Your income can vary widely from one year to the next, unlike most other jobs where you know how much to expect. If you don’t like risk and uncertainty, you are not going to enjoy farming,” he says. “Even at the best of times, you have to be comfortable with always being financially strapped. You have to accept that your wealth will be tied up in land, machinery and other assets. And there are so many factors, like the weather, over which you have no control.”
Safeguarding Our Food System
“Being the son of a farmer gave me many advantages over someone without an agricultural background,” Talsma says. “Experience raising cattle and growing crops qualified me for low-interest loans to buy land. My father was able to extend temporary financing until those loans came through.” He also had use of a corn planter, manure spreader, skid loader, tractor and combine that his father owned—a huge financial help, since a new combine alone can cost $500,000 or more. “To buy the land and equipment from scratch would have been super capital intensive. I’m not going to claim it’s impossible,” Talsma says, then trails off into a long and meaningful, “but …”
Leaning on Next-Gen Practices
Like many farmers of his generation, Talsma is acutely aware of environmental concerns and sees agriculture as a way to help. He grows cover crops instead of leaving his land bare during the winter months. This prevents erosion and improves the fertility and structure of his soil, with the added benefit of providing food for his animals, whose manure, in a virtuous cycle, further enhances his fields. Healthy soil is key because it has the ability to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which plants draw in through their roots.
Initially, the neophytes' efforts resulted in disaster. For decades, Caroline’s aunt had rotated corn and hay through the fields and maintained the appearance of lushness with plentiful applications of chemical fertilizers and herbicides. Jesse put an end to that practice, fearing that they may have brought about Caroline’s aunt’s premature death from cancer. (He said she loved the sweetish smell of the herbicide Roundup.) Untreated, the fields reverted to what Jesse describes as gravel pits. “You could walk from one end to the other and not step on a blade of grass. Nothing grew there,” he says.
Jesse McDougall"Every farm has something untapped that can be done to make it more viable."
Jesse McDougall
“Every farm has something untapped that can be done to make it more viable.”
The Draw of Tech
If doing good for the planet, not to mention being profitable, could entice a new breed of farmers, agricultural tech companies, such as Indigo Ag and Granular, Inc., know that state-of-the-art technology—which allows farmers to increase crop production, accurately monitor yields and apply the ideal amount of fertilizer over vast stretches of land from behind an office desk while maximizing profits—is another way to lure those who are far more comfortable in the world of computers than their parents. People like Kasey Bamberger, 29. She graduated from college in 2013 with a major not in soil science or livestock management, but in business, and came back home, joining her father, grandfather, cousin, uncle and two dozen other employees atBryant Agriculture Enterprise, which grows corn, soybeans and wheat on 20,000 acres in southwestern Ohio. Today, she and her cousin, Heath Bryant, who is 10 years older, run the organization. He oversees field work, she is responsible for finance and adopting the electronic systems that are now critical to the farm’s prosperity.
With the help of Granular Inc., a 7-year-old San Francisco based agricultural software company, Bamberger manages data from every one of the more than 130 separate fields without leaving her desk. The software tracks fertilizer applications and seeding rates, and gives her realtime information about what’s going on in the fields—from rainfall and exact tillage depth to the number of hours employees spend working each area of land—along with total crop yields and, ultimately, the profit. “Instead of one size fits all, I can manage each field individually. And I could manage one of them 50 miles away as if it was right outside my office window,” she says. “We have always been progressive here, even in my grandfather’s day. You can’t farm tomorrow like you do today.”
Lowering the Barriers
The commitment of growers like Talsma, the McDougalls and Bamberger offers reasons to be hopeful about the future of our food system. But we are running out of time, according to Sophie Ackoff of the National Young Farmers Coalition. “We see this moment as key,” she says. “Will we be able to look back and say that we’ve made the transition to a new generation of farmers before that land goes out of production for ever? We need for the policies to be in place now.”
The federal farm bill, a $428 billion program last updated in 2018, affects all aspects of agriculture in this country. Currently, the USDA has no single department or person to coordinate programs that help young farmers access and afford land. When COVID assistance to farmers became available, for example, many young people couldn’t take advantage of it because it was designed for commodity farmers. USDA crop insurance—which provides a crucial safety net should crops fail, which they do—is also designed for big farms that grow thousands of acres of one thing, not startup farmers who rely on a diversity of products for financial stability.
The bill is due to be renewed in 2023, and the coalition is advocating for program adjustments and outreach to help young and novice farmers. In addition to creating a coordinating body at the USDA to handle land access and transition, Ackoff’s goal for the next farm bill is to earmark $2.5 billion specifically to help equitably transition 1 million acres of land from retiring growers to young farmers and farmers of color. She was heartened early last year when the members of the new administration approached her and let it be known that they recognized the problems of an aging farm population—and wanted to do better. “As an organization, we’ve gone from being the new kid on the block to being a group that agriculture committee members and White House staffers talk to before making decisions,” Ackoff says. “Before, the needs of young farmers never came to the surface. They are totally there now.”
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