The U.S. government is not only monitoring the trend of new farmers they are encouraging them by offering loans for land and operating costs.
USDA’s Farm Service Agency Pushes To Create New Farmers
REUTERS
By Carey Gillam
Huffington Post — GREEN
HALLSVILLE, Mo., Feb 6 (Reuters) – Dan Pugh wishes he had a bigger tractor and his wife Laura worries about their chickens in the winter weather. But as new farmers putting down roots in rural Missouri, the Pughs are counting on more rewards than regrets in trading their city lives for the country.
A better quality of food and life are among the factors that caused Dan, 47, to leave a career in sales last year and move Laura, 48, and their two young children to 50-acres (20 hectares) of rolling pastureland they call Honey Creek Farm.
The Pughs will plant their first crop of organic spinach and lettuces in the next few weeks on ground they tilled behind the barn they converted into a two-bedroom home. They are shopping for sheep and hogs. And though their first hives of bees mysteriously died, Laura is determined to develop a successful honey operation as well.
“The whole food and farming system is so out of whack,” Dan Pugh said. “We want better and we can do something to help other people eat better.”
For those who remember the American TV series, call it the “Green Acres” effect. Fueled by an economic downturn that has curtailed the upward mobility of many corporate jobs, general dissatisfaction with suburban stresses and growing discontent with what they see as the ills of industrialized agriculture, thousands of families across the United States have left suburban cul de sacs and headed to the countryside – forging a new demographic of family farmer.
The U.S. government is not only monitoring the trend, it is encouraging it – backing loans for land purchases and operating expenses as well as grants for seminars and workshops to train people how to be farmers. Government-backed loans to new farmers have more than doubled in the past decade.
The goal is to reverse a worrisome trend: U.S. Census data through 2007 showed a lack of young farmers to replace aging operators – the average age of U.S. farmers rose from 52 in 1987 to 55 in 2007. The government hopes that new census data due this year will show more young farmers, a factor that government leaders say is critical for the future of food production.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has set a goal of creating 100,000 new farmers in the next few years. Department of Agriculture programs target youth, women, Hispanics, American Indians and returning military veterans. It does not matter if the want-to-be farmers have agriculture in their background or have never set foot outside the city, there are programs to help them buy land and equipment and figure out what to grow.
AGING FARMERS
“The farming population today is aging rather rapidly,” Vilsack said in an interview. “Over 30 percent of the current farm population is over the age of 65. We have a whole generation that is set to retire. The question is then who will take over those operations. We need generations of leaders in American agriculture to continue our position as the number one agricultural country in the world.”
U.S. agriculture leaders say change is under way in Washington to support new farm practices and they say a rural renaissance is not only a way to add diversity to food production but also a means for bolstering the economy and reversing a decline in rural populations.
