Pruning is now finished for another season. What a great feeling! We are now in the last stages of orchard cleanup. The prunings have all been mulched with the flail mower/mulcher and the grandchildren have done a final sweep to gather anything left in the aisle ways that would hinder spring chemical application or summer mowing. The milder temperatures of the past week have encouraged bud swell. Not something we really want to see yet as there is considerable time before we are free from the dangers of frost and freezing. Overall though, the orchard looks good; pruned, clean and starting to green and awaiting another growing season.
Farmers’ Markets are starting to organize for another season and we have attended meetings to update ourselves on the new rules and regulations for food and marketing safety. An observation we have made at these meetings is the aging of those agricultural producers in attendance. Doing a little research on this observation we have come up with some interesting statistics. The editors of “American Fruit Grower” magazine polled their readers and found that over fifty percent of growers have no one of the GenNext generation who wanted to assume leadership in their agricultural operations. The USDA’s Start2Farm program notes the number of growers older than 75 has grown 30% while the number of growers under the age of 25 has dropped by 20%. So why should these statistics raise concerns? Quite simply, the future generation will need food to eat. Who is going to produce it when the current producers finally retire?
Young adults who do show an interest in farming encounter insurmountable struggles. It is no secret young adults have heavy student loan debt that puts a heavy strain on their future. They struggle to get capital and find it impossible to enter the farming industry without it. It is not easy to find available land to farm, either to rent or to purchase. If left unchecked, this trend will challenge the ability of this country to produce its own food. Not only will there be food production and distribution issues, but there will be a loss of thousands of acres of working and tillable lands that we currently rely upon. When the small producer goes away so will agriculture as we know it today.