Sustaining today's farm family

The 21st century brings many challenges in sustaining today's farm families. Since 1935, the population has risen from 127,000,000 to more than 314,000,000 people living in the United States.

As of now, the population in the U.S. is growing by 3.3 million per year. Of that population, less than 1 percent claim farming as an occupation (and about 2 percent actually live on farms). There are only about 960,000 persons claiming farming as their principal occupation and a similar number of farmers claiming some other principal occupation. The number of farms in the U.S. stands at about two million.

In 1935, the number of farms in the United States peaked at 6.8 million. So were did all of these farms go? After the Depression and dust bowl of the 1930s, many of the 6.8 million continued to farm, but with memories of the bad times.

The 1940s was the start of what many call "the Baby Boomer years" and continued to around 1964. This era was the start of a major shift of the farming population. Many industrialized jobs were formed, with good working environments controlled by a newly formed union. Many could leave the farm and more than double their wages. So they did.

The 1970s were pretty good years to farm, but the 1980s were on the horizon, with high interest rates and drought causing many farmers to sell their land and forever leaving the farm. All of this made it very difficult for the next generation to start farming or want to farm.

The 1990s through about 2005 continued to hamper the next generation with very low commodity prices and or poor production years.

This brings us to today. Some may ask, "So how old are the farmers that made it through the bad times?" The average age is 57 with one quarter being 65 and older.

And who owns the farms? According to the Census of Agriculture, the vast majority of farms in this country (90 percent) are owned and operated by individuals or families. The next largest category of ownership is partnerships (6 percent). The "corporate" farms account for only 3 percent of U.S. farms and 90 percent of those are family owned.

In all, America's family farms will need a transition to the next generation in the next 10 to 20 years. With the continued volatility in today's market place, high input, land and machinery cost, followed by huge swings in commodity prices and the influx of stringent regulations, all making it very difficult for the transition.

This is why it is so critical for the protection of the American farm family. These farm families will continue to feed, fuel and cloth not only our own county, but the world.