One of the most-reported statistics about American agriculture is the rising average age of farmers – 58.3 years in the 2012 Census of Agriculture, an increase of 1.2 years from the 2007 census, writes economist David Widmar at the blog Agricultural Economic Insights. “A deeper dig shows that the number of producers older than 64 is on the rise. In fact, 85.7% of that increase (farms with primary operators older than 64) came from operations with multiple operators. This would suggest that, potentially, multiple generation farms are becoming more common and allowing the primary operators to stay in the game longer,” writes Widmar.
Widmar discusses the implications of older farmers in a blog about the agricultural census and “8 trends shaping the future of agriculture.”
The home page for the Census of Agriculture is available here.