The people who farm those remaining agricultural acres are getting older. According to a 2002 census by the Department of Agriculture, the average age of an estimated 2 million U.S. farmers is 55 years old. In Bell County, the average age is 56.
Bell County agriculture extension agent Dirk Aaron says starting from scratch in farming today is increasingly fraught with pitfalls that discourage a lot of young people from entering the business.
“It’s hard to get into the business with so many speed bumps and obstacles in their way,” Aaron said.
Many of the state and county’s rookie farmers are not all that young either, Aaron said.
“Some of the people buying rural land now are doctors or lawyers or mid–career retirees or business people who want to buy land in these outlying rural areas,” he said. “They might take 1,000 acres of productive farm land at least partially out of operation.”
Aaron said some farmers are advising their children to follow that particular path to agriculture. They are advised to go to college, make their money in a professional field and buy their way back into agriculture.
Even when they do start farming, young farmers face the same obstacles as their older counterparts. Land fragmentation caused by the urbanization of once rural land often puts the farmer in conflict with local entities and their new neighbors, who don’t necessarily understand exactly what the farmer is doing and why.
“Agriculture is generally pretty low on the civic priority list,” Aaron said.
He said his office has been asked for ag input into ETJ and other city expansion hearings, but he often arrives at the meetings to find that the cities already have a blueprint in place.
“As a society, we don’t have the intrinsic belief in agriculture that we used to have,” Aaron said. Not only that, but the full–time farmer is increasingly becoming an anachronism.
“One thing you find with a lot of the 50–year–old farmers is that most work to supplement their incomes,” Aaron said. “They might drive a truck or work in town in addition to their farming work. There just aren’t as many full–time farmers as there used to be.”
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
