About 31% of Idaho's farmers are retirement age.
More than half of American farmers will reach retirement age in the next 10 years, but the steep price of entry to start a farm, along with rising input costs and volatile markets, make it tough for young and beginning farmers to take their places. The current financial outlook for farmers is particularly challenging.
Farmers face rising costs for not only farmland, but also fertilizer, fuel, seeds and chemicals. Meanwhile, high crop prices that have buoyed farmers over the past year are expected to go down.
House lawmakers are looking for ways to mitigate some of these risks and support young and beginning farmers in the next farm bill, the sweeping legislation that will set programs and funding levels for farm and food support for the next five years.
A third of America’s 3.4 million farmers are over 65, and nearly a million more are within a decade of that milestone retirement age, according to the most recent agricultural census from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The census was taken in 2017 and published in 2019.
The census said nearly 14,000 of Idaho’s farmers were over 65. That was 31% of the farmers in the state as of 2017.