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Original URL: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm
Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.
The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md.
[...] This new generation can't hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.
"We're going to see a sea change in American agriculture as the next generation gets on the land," said Kathleen Merrigan, the head of the Food Institute at George Washington University and a deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. "The only question is whether they'll get on the land, given the challenges."
The number of farmers age 25 to 34 grew 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2014 USDA census, a period when other groups of farmers — save the oldest — shrunk by double digits. In some states, such as California, Nebraska and South Dakota, the number of beginning farmers has grown by 20 percent or more.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:00PM (7 children)
I've tried with little success to find a local farmer (Finger Lakes area of NY State) to simply take the hay off my 90 acre rural property. As a result, the fields (about 20 acres, rest is steep/wooded) are tree-ing in.
My parents bought the land for a family retreat in the 1960s and back then there was a nice old dairy farmer who took the hay for his cows. Once he retired, there has never been anyone regular. I love the place, but it's a couple of hours away by car and I don't have time to give it the attention it deserves.
It would be great to have some aspiring young farmer growing crops (we never sprayed the fields--so it is ready for organic), but I fear it's too far from any city or larger farmer's market to be a good location.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:30PM (5 children)
You might consider a lease. Farmers who might be reluctant to work another person's land, may be more willing to lease that land, for twenty, fifty, or 100 years. It's kinda like a rental, but of course, it's different. With a lease, all of YOUR rights are spelled out, and all of HIS rights are spelled out. You get payments, regularly, according to the schedule you agree on.
For his part, that farmer has invested something into your land, and he's not going to neglect it. If he only pays you a couple hundred dollars per year, he's going to get all he can for that money. If he's paying you a thousand dollars per year, he's going to do his best to get five thousand dollars out of that land.
I would imagine (don't really know) that you can make arrangements through a real estate agent. See a lawyer, get some guidance on the lease, then have a real estate agent advertise your land for lease. See the lawyer again before actually signing the lease. Lease the entire property, or lease just those bottom lands fit for hay and/or truck farming. If you have buildings that might be leased with the property, the value increases tremendously.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @07:59PM (4 children)
It's a poor area (who would have guessed in NY State) and as the farmers leave then the rural land is being bought up by NY City money...who use it once a year for deer (etc.) hunting. I'll investigate your idea of a lease, but don't have much hope when everyone with farming history is leaving (and/or dying off).
Our land is posted for no hunting, but we don't even try to go there during the seasons (bow and gun) due to the danger. I've collected many shells and even removed a couple of tree stands left by illegal hunters. Oh, and found a wide variety of beer cans, wine bottles and hard liquor bottles--hunters seem to be drunks(?)
Over the years a few neighbors have asked to hunt and I'm happy to give them permission (often kids going for rabbit or squirrel with a 22 or something small), but I wish I could do something to keep out the drunk hunters that come in from the cities.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @08:49PM (3 children)
Go to a sporting goods store.
Buy some game tracking cameras.
Salt your property with them. Especially places where they might walk or park.
Go to your local county sheriff's office with pictures, and your lawyer.
Nail them hard.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
Nice idea, but the local sheriffs (and deputies) are often hunting too, along with the influx from the big cities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @12:37AM
If they are trespassing on your land, and you have evidence, then you take it to state enforcement.
Many sheriffs have discovered that there's a bigger dog, rather to their disgust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Monday November 27 2017, @01:26AM
I don't live in the US, so I don't have to deal with that particular genus of redneck. However, I got really REALLY really sick of poaching on my land soon after buying it. I posted no trespassing signs all over the place, and scattered game cameras around the woods. Since then, I've had no further sign of poaching. Granted, I live on the property so it's easier for me, but a lot of it has to do with marking my territory with the signs. It signals to assholes that things have changed and word gets around that someone new owns the land.
All I've caught on the camera so far are deer, but it makes for pleasant watching.
When there's a vacant property and people have been doing whatever they want on it for years with impunity, it's going to be hard to change that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:38PM
Let the land tree in. Or have a proper mixed forest planted on it. Your local DNR can probably help.
Your kids or grand kids can harvest the wood and start again.
Its better for the environment, and you are hopeless at farming anyway, and apparently so were your parents.
Nobody needs that hay.
The reason there is so much of that happening to land everywhere is that there is no longer any need to have that much land under cultivation.
Especially land in that particular area. Dairy was all it was really ever good for - maybe sheep, but you clearly don't seem interested in that.
So give the world a gift of trees.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.