A Young Generation sees Greener Pastures in Agriculture

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America’s heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.

Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there’s new crop of farmers to thank for it.

A Cultural Shift Towards Valuing Agriculture

In Maine, farmers under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent, says John Rebar, executive director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension: “Nationally, that increase is 1.5 percent.”  And young farmers are being drawn to other rural Northeastern states as well, he says. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were all hotbeds of activity during the previous back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Many of those pioneers stayed and helped create farming and gardening organizations that now offer support and encouragement for new farmers.

The social climate now is very different than the one Rebar encountered 30 years ago when he himself was an aspiring producer of cattle and sheep.  "I was called ‘Farmer’ by my classmates in high school. That was okay with me, but you could tell it wasn’t a term of endearment,“ he says. "There was a lot of negativity about encouraging young people to go into farming.

"So it’s a cultural shift that says we value this as part of our society. We want this to be part of our social fabric, so we’re going to figure out ways to make it work.”  Part of making it work means access to land. On their coastal farm, where acreage is more expensive than it is inland, Gelvosa and Gerritsen say they’re luckier than most; Gerritsen’s parents had bought the property years before, which made starting up for the couple a lot easier.

In Iowa, farmland prices are inching toward $9,000 per acre, which has some financial experts talking about a farmland bubble. But sparsely developed states like Maine still possess affordable lands, which savvy young farmers with a little money — and a lot of elbow grease — are starting to acquire.