There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise

I see a bad moon a risin’… or at least the Wall Street Journal does. In an (albeit from 2017) article entitled The Next American Farm Bust Is Upon Us the narrative of how American grain farming has evolved over the past three decades is outlined, but more importantly how American farmers are currently taking it on the nose. Included is the dire prediction that in the immediate future, the usefulness of these types of farms (and farmers) is shrinking in relation to world demand. Not pointed out specifically, but danced around is the increasing average age of American farmers. I have heard it said that the average age of the American farmer is 65.

Whether all that is good or bad, depends on what our goals are.

For Big Ag, this is not a positive note. On one hand, they have an entire generation of farmers which have been trained and indoctrinated into their fold, spouting their party lines. “Changing to organic will lead to starvation,” “feed the world,” and best of all, “fence-row to fence-row” dot their patterns of speech. I do not dislike these people. It’s not their fault that they’ve been lied to over and over. The latter two phrases are right out of USDA policy from the 1970’s and 80’s. Also, most people are biologically disadvantaged to change their paradigm of the way that they have done things over their lifetime, by age fifty. That puts the average well past that mark.

So here’s where it’s not such a great thing for Big Ag. The other side of this is that for the last 30 or so years, farming has become a “rich man’s game.” I’m unsure how that happened, seeing as how farming (at least in a manner considered “conventional” in this day and age) isn’t exactly profitable. My entire adult life I have been barred from entering into agriculture because I didn’t have the money. It just costs too much to start into this business unless you “marry or bury” your way in. The consequence for that, is that farming operations got bigger and bigger, and farmers got older. With no real replacement generation, aside from the children of existing farmers, there’s an immense hole looming. And the part that’s really scary for big ag? Nobody wants to really fill their shoes, at least not the way that they’re filled now.

I was in FFA in the latter half of the 1990s. At that time the average farmers age was 55. I looked at that statistic with some level of indignation because I believed, incorrectly, that no one wanted to farm anymore. I had the misconception that it was simple laziness that led so many young people away from farm life never to return. It seems that a healthy dose of economic reality, coupled with a strong sense of “we’ve always done it this way,” became more than your average twenty-something was able to cope with. I know I wasn’t able to cope with it. I left for college and spent ten miserable years living in what I considered suburban/corporate hell. One divorce and wedding later I found myself in my old stomping grounds, facing those two detrimental factors with a healthy sense of positive energy. I was going to overcome all that you see.

Three years of working FOR my father, as opposed to working WITH my father (which was my preference) and I determined that he was both set in his ways, and I was facing a phenomenon which radio financial guru Dave Ramsey refers to as “powdered butt syndrome.” You see since he once powdered my butt as an infant, there is absolutely no way I know more than him in ANY subject. And as an employer, your father is not the ideal candidate since he can tell you what he really thinks, and vice versa.

Dad’s not a bad guy. In fact I have a great deal of respect for him, and despite what I said earlier, he is pretty innovative for a farmer in this day and age. But it occurs to me that while I can no longer work for him in the capacity I have for several years off and on out of high school, if I can just demonstrate to him some ideas outside what he sees as “normal” then I may receive his blessing and possibly support. He’s from Missouri, you see, you have to show him. There again, that takes financial capital.

So, the solutions I am seeing begin to come about from both members of my own generation, and those coming after us, is to start small. As small is as feasible. It’s important to know your customers. It’s paramount to negotiate your own price. It’s impossible to function without learning how to market. And most important of all, we are all trying to leave it better than we left it. That doesn’t seem so bad, right? Also it doesn’t hurt that we are growing and raising ACTUAL FOOD, not exchangeable commodities.

None of those things were of paramount importance to those older guys. Their market was established and paid them, no marketing or salesmanship required. People were falling over themselves with information for these farmers. University Extension officers, seed salesmen, and chemical representatives all came forward with new technologies and tactics. They took farmers on trips to Las Vegas and the Bahamas. See the pattern yet?

How does the view look from the perspective of our young men and women at this point? Is it just another case of out with the old and in with the new? I think what I can see is a young generation looking at what has been done, and viewing it all with mixed emotions. The economics of the current paradigm isn’t terribly promising. The idea that large segments of society may view them as ignorant or evil, depending on the context, isn’t likely to gain a large following either. And furthermore we (I count myself here) have watched our parents generation embark in some really terrible practices, which they are beginning to be called out for. Again, hardly anyone is willing to perpetuate that, especially with no likely gain. Because while my father didn’t degrade the land he has control of, many of his contemporaries did. And they continue to do so.

So back to Big Ag. In ten years that average age of farmers will be 70+. Of all of the young farmers that I know (and I live in a relatively close-knit community) almost all of them are shying away from rowcrop agriculture at scale. That spreads the remaining willing participants thinner and thinner. As these large farms owned by the remnants of the Greatest Generation begin to be sold off by their uninterested or financially barred children and grandchildren, who will be there to pick up the baton? Younger bigger farmers? Maybe a few. Corporate farms? Possibly, but that is usually a worse scenario because the larger the operation the less efficient each acre becomes. Or how about this; coalitions and cooperatives of young farmers willing to own and operate a smaller portion more efficiently and healthily? More like farms looked before big ag? In short, maybe we will see rural America subdivided for the better. That’s my hope. After all revitalizing rural America boils down to one thing: more farmers.

So big ag may be up a creek long term, as their loyal farmers become fewer and fewer, while their markets dry up in droves. Ultimately, we don’t need the IBPs or the ADMs. We aren’t going to settle for the established markets that our parents did. We are going to work on quality and salesmanship. And I doubt that in the long run, that we will cut the biological corners our previous generations did just to make a buck, because we answer to our customers for a change. Somehow our struggle to get into this field has given us a healthy sense of accomplishment, having really done something to get here. And since we have had to forge our own path to get this far, why bother playing the game by someone else’s rules now?

Supposing that the Wall Street Journal’s predictions are correct, and that there is a looming disaster on the horizon, here are some likely effects: Since Grain farmers (the group most affected and outlined in the WSJ article) are part of a much larger farm community, everyone in agriculture is likely to feel the effects of any hiccup in what is a relatively small industry. I’ve lived through two such hiccups. Entire rural communities get devastated when one of these occurs and this time will be no exception I assume. The good news is rural people are resilient. We pick up the pieces. We will carry on, and largely what we are likely to see is the forced retirement of a generation of farmers.

However, instead of fewer farmers soaking up more land, as the last two crises went, I see a true alternative coming to light. The key to surviving a crisis is seeing it coming and prepositioning yourself to take advantage. Hopefully we can all do that. So maybe we can avoid the worst of effects of that “Bad Moon a Risin’.” Or maybe it won’t be rising over us, because we’re already out of the way.