The Next Generation
by Brian Depew
In this inaugural edition of Reap/Sow you can read hopeful stories about young people engaging in our food and agriculture systems. I cannot emphasize how important these stories are to me.
I grew up on a relatively small family farm in northwest Iowa, and the experience gave me an understanding of the value of a vibrant food and agriculture system. The point was driven home for me last summer on while driving across the great plains of Montana.
Montana’s wheat belt (the “golden triangle”) has undergone significant change in recent years. As I drove aimlessly down mile after mile of gravel road only a few houses broke the proverbial amber waves of grain. It seemed that about half, or maybe three quarters of these houses were abandoned. It was difficult to tell exactly as some occupied homesteads were nearly as rundown as other seemingly vacant ones.
I am accustomed to seeing abandoned houses in rural areas. Growing up on in Iowa there were half a dozen abandoned houses within a couple of miles of our farm. What struck me about Montana’s wheat country were two things. In an already sparsely populated area the abandonment of a farmstead can easily mean literally miles between remaining inhabitants. Additionally I was stuck by the large percentage of houses that seem to have been abandoned in just the last five to ten years.
It was harvest time when I passed through the area, and the wheat fields hosted trios of large combines crawling across them in unison. In one particular case each of three combines was buttressed by a grain truck or wagon. Campers sat at the edge of some of the fields, and fuel trucks delivered petroleum to the fields. The picture was becoming clear. The fuel trucks were required because the nearest farmsteads were much too far away to fetch fuel from, and the campers provided a place for these laborers to sleep.
Back on the interstate headed for Wyoming harvester crews destine for the field passed outside the car window. A crew typically consisted of two or three grain trucks, three combines being pulled on flatbeds, and often a camper all traveling as a group. These crews (presumably custom operators and not just local farmers) can move across wheat country harvesting thousands of acres at a time. They leave little reason for anyone to occupy the remaining farm houses.
Wheat country has always been better suited to this type of industrialization, but corn and soybean territory, like my home state of Iowa, is not immune to the trend. In Iowa nearly half of all farmland is owned by people over 65 years old. The same is true for much the Midwest.
From were we stand today there is no clear new generation of farmers. As I reflect on my travels down the long gravel roads of Montana, this fact gives me reason to pause. If there are no young people to farm the land owned by retiring farmers I fear that the model taking hold over the golden triangle will spread to other regions.
I returned from my trip not with renewed hope, but with a renewed sense of urgency. We must work to reinvigorate agriculture and food production with a new generation of farmers. The work being done by the young people that you will read about in Reap/Sow and by The Food Project is part of this important task.
With a legion of young people outfitted with new and innovate ideas about how our food and agriculture systems can support a more sustainable future we will win this fight.
Brian is pursuing his PhD at Michigan State University, and is a member of the BLAST Cadre