Think of a farmer and what image comes to mind? Perhaps that of an older man tilling the fields? Or maybe it’s his wife, bent down over the crops, tending to them? These are the pictures of farmers that most of us grew up with, and what we first think of when we think of this industry in which 1 out of every 8 Canadians is involved in. But a new survey suggests that there’s a new generation of farmers today. And this one’s made up of mostly young people – and most women!
It was the FarmStart survey that showed just how popular farming is becoming among young people. The chart below shows just how young people are far outpacing the older generation when it comes to creating, maintaining, and running their farm; and if you want to read the survey in its entirety, you can click here to see it.
The change is coming from an urge to farm, rather than an obligation that is handed down in families from generation to generation.
“I saw something was wrong with the world, but I didn’t want to push paper around trying to change it,” says Leslie Moskovits, who now farms her own land in Neustadt, Ontario after giving up years worth of work at the Ministry of Environment. “When you work on a farm that respects the environment, you see your impact on the Earth in a very real way.”
Part of it is that young people, especially women, want to leave the fast-paced city life and move to rural areas, where skies are open and land is cheap. Another part of it is that these same women want to really take care of the environment, and leave something of value behind for our future generations. But what’s playing an even bigger impact is that when high interest rates hit in the 1980s, farming was simply no longer a viable option for young people. And instead of taking over the family farm, they had to go to the big cities where the big jobs were.
In fact in just twenty years, during the time of 1991 – 2011, Ontario lost almost 70 per cent of its farmers that were under the age of 35. And the only farming demographic that saw any growth at all were those that fell into the 55+ category. This had led to what some have called a crisis in Ontario farming. Mark Wales, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, disagrees.
“We’d like to retire someday,” says Mr. Wales. “And we need a new generation to replace us.”
He says that the real crisis might be that farming is not a career choice that’s spoken about a lot in high schools and universities. Tarrah Young, who’s 35 years old and owns her own Berkshire pig farm, agrees.
“It opened my eyes to the idea that a person from an urban background could choose farming as a career,” she says after taking an organic agriculture course at the University of Guelph. “The thought had never occurred to me before.”
And in fact, Moskovits and Young both know how important it is to get the idea of farming into the minds of more young people. This is why each runs internship programs from their farms, offering room and board to those who want to learn the life of a farmer.
But while not growing up on the land might be a disadvantage to these young women that are now starting their own farms, they also have a huge advantage of their predecessors – that’s the advantage of once living in a city, and already having a network established in that city.
“When I had to sell my pigs for the first time,” says Young, “I just emailed every person I knew and it worked out perfectly.”
But, she says, that may not be the case for everyone.
“I don’t know why more women are getting into farming,” Young says with a small laugh. “Maybe we’re suckers and we’re desperate for punishment.”
She does insist that farming isn’t something you just wake up and do one day. Her land alone cost her a princely sum of $340,000; and then there’s the cost of equipment and other infrastructure for the farm, things which do not come cheap.
Plus, there’s always the fact that “we’re a risky bunch,” as Young puts it. Walking into a bank and asking for an agriculture loan isn’t like asking for any other mortgage, she says. Farms are much harder to obtain financing for; and banks are much more leery of lending to farmers given the instability of the business.
But for young headstrong men and women that have grown up in the city and have both the school smarts and the street smarts, a way can always be found. And farming, it’s been proven, is always a great option!
