More Young People Are Becoming Farmers (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: "For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest Census of Agriculture," the WashPost's Caitlin Downey reports in a front-pager with the lovely headline, "A growing movement." 69% of the surveyed young farmers had college degrees -- significantly higher than the general population.

Comments

Re:Let me guess

[Dan East]

Subsidized corn to make ethanol crap? FTFY

Not surprised

[Kokuyo]

Well, you look at open space offices, the daily grind, lack of job security, the housing market and voilÃ, farming keeps looking better and better. With the whole bio/organic trend, you don't even need to treat animals like crap and all the newfangled technology makes the hard labor much more bearable than a few decades ago.

It ain't for me but I do get it.

Re:Not surprised

[Ol Olsoc]

It's also not a bad idea to know how to feed yourself either. I grew up in the mid-west and if I had to I could grow and hunt for food, make jelly, can vegetables and fruit, and dig a well.

I could probably also build a some crude wind turbines to generate power and charge a battery bank.

I loves me my technology, but I also do foraging, gardening, curing, and other charcuterie and even canning as a way to connect with the earth. There is also a tradition with my relatives and old school friends of sharing food that we made. That Eastern European thing of breaking bread and all.

I recently finished up a big batch of Concorde Grape jelly, and do a kickass dry rubbed bacon. Tomorrow I start the fall sausage making with smoked Hungarian hot sausage, sage breakfast links, and patties. I don't hunt any more, but friends will drop off venison that I make bologna out of. Smoked trout makes for a good snack as well, and I make something called Salmon candy, which does involve the store bought stuff. cured, smoked and sweet. Damn it - now I'm hungry.

As for the windmill generator, Farmers were at the forefront of off-grid power generation. Before the Rural Electrification project in the 1930's, the windmills were in use generating power to banks of batteries. There was a whole sub industry of building radios and home lighting that ran on 12 volts.

Realization

[Jfetjunky]

Maybe some are realizing there are other paths to life than spending a majority of it sitting in traffic and in a cubicle. Good for them. Farming is no picnic of its own, of course, but definitely a different road.

Alternate Headline

[Theaetetus]

Facing Rising Unemployment, Young People Return to Subsistence Living

Re:Alternate Headline

[zifn4b]

Facing Rising Unemployment, Young People Return to Subsistence Living

It's ironic isn't is? During the Industrial Revolution, industrial tycoons had difficulty convincing people in rural communities to come work in factories. They had to compel them with competitive wages. Now the corporate universe keeps trying to use psychological tricks to get us to digest more and more bullshit reasons to work more for less wages and now it's sparked a trend of fleeing the post-industrial world back to rural communities. The big difference between rural work and corporate work is that you, the individual, reap the rewards of rural work while in the corporate world, it's the Board of Directors that reaps most of the benefits. It's no surprise why people would be compelled to move back to rural communities.

Re:Alternate Headline

[Brickwall]

I don't even think it's the question of benefits so much as satisfaction. When you bring in a crop, or see your livestock, you know what you've done - you've created food from scratch and you're helping to feed your fellow man. That has to be much more satisfying than the poor saps at, e.g., Wells Fargo - 'great, I just added another eight phony accounts to my customers, that'll make the boss happy!"

Not your fathers farming.

[jellomizer]

Modern Farming is often more Technically advanced then many of these so called Tech jobs. Automated Robotic Systems, Big data collections, Bio and Chemical Engineering... Farmer Brown needs to be just as Apt in front of a computer as he does with a pitchfork.

Farming may be tough work, but it is challenging hands on career that for some people is very reward. Me growing up on a Farm, it is the furthest thing I would like to do, but for others it is a good rewarding job.

With the rise in interest of more natural farming, and locally sourced food etc... It would make sense that a renewed interest in farming is becoming more popular. Besides a lot of people think we are going to hit some big disaster that will knock us to the dark ages, so being a farmer is a good place to be.

They need to

[TykeClone]

The average age of farmers in the US is about retirement age.

sex out of the city

[bugs2squash]

I credit farmersonly.com

Broken record

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah yeah the governement is incompetent corporations are evil bla bla bla. Heard this all before a million times.

There's a huge difference between acquiring skills and becoming self sufficient on one side (good thing) and becoming a paranoid para-military prepper on the other (bad thing)

Must really suck to view everything as a threat and everyone as an ennemy. That's not the kind of life I want to live. But that doesn't mean I'm delusional either.

I really do hope our country gets back to the principles it was founded on

Not with that attitude it won't. Countries don't simply "fix" themselves while their citizens retreat to their bunkers cutting themselves off from the world. Do you know what "countries" are ? People. Tired of incompetent governements ? Stop electing incompetent people. Tired of evil corporations ? Stop giving them freely and wilingly your money. Presidents and CEO's are just people too, picked from the pool of the general population.

As a great man once said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Educate sourselves. Get involved. Become more knowledgeable, smarter, wiser, more mature, more rational. People do get the kind of governement (and corporations) they deserve. Become a people worthy of the kind of governement you demand.

Re:Broken record

[Brickwall]

" Countries don't simply "fix" themselves while their citizens retreat to their bunkers cutting themselves off from the world. " Jeezus H. F'ing... clearly, you have never lived in a rural area. People there don't "cut themselves off"; they know better than any urbanite how much they need the help of their friends and neighbours when they're in trouble. I've lived in urban areas most of my life, and I don't know the names of the people two doors down, or across the street. In the country, you know everyone for miles around, including how many kids they have, what car they drive, and what church they go to. I'd argue the sense of real community is much, much stronger in the countryside than it is in the city.

Sounds like me...

[used2win32]

I work in the tech industry. I live on a farm.

We do not have a sprawling farms with hundreds of acres. Our farm is less than five acres. We have two homes, a barn, a shop and cross pastured land. We use the land to raise our own meat. We raise dairy and meat goats and cows, chickens, turkeys, hogs, sheep and lamb. We like to say that our animals were conceived here, born here, raised here, died here, and were processed here.

We know exactly what is in our meat. Mothers milk, hay, grass, alfalfa, corn, oats, peas, wheat, rye, barley and a few treats like salted peanuts and apples. They also get, do to the naturally low levels in our soil, a magnesium supplement. That is it.

We have friends who grow the hay and grains we get, some who raise veggies (we only raise a few items). The barter system goes a long way.

Why do we do it? I find myself looking at the paragraph above, "We know exactly what is in our meat." Do you? After we process an animal, they are kept in one of our six freezers. Have some for us and some we barter/sell from. When they are not used, they are unplugged.

...Also, running a small farm, our only "equipment" is a pickup, a four horse stock trailer, and a bobcat loader with two attachments. The cost of entry is not too bad.

Try it, you may like it.