Many Gen Z Farmers Will Never Touch Dirt
It’s a great selling point that will help grow the rapidly aging agriculture industry.
This isn’t your grandparents’ farm.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergThe farmers who grew the food you ate for breakfast are, most likely, at the end of their careers. The average age of the 3.4 million US farmers is now shy of 58, up from 56 in 2012. A scant 9% of American farmers are younger than 35, but that percentage has begun to grow: The latest Census of Agriculture found that in recent years, the number of US farmers younger than 35 increased by 11%. More surprising still: “Gen Z farmer” is now trending with more than 30 million views on TikTok, and “Gen Z farming” has 17 billion views.
There’s a huge chasm, of course, between a social media trend and a committed workforce: Participation among young farmers isn’t yet growing nearly as fast as the aging workers will phase out. The agriculture industry, policymakers and investors have a lot of work to do to draw and retain recruits.