Reader reponse: Young farmers are a real, diverse, and growing movement in agriculture. The numbers just don’t show it

In reality, the farmers involved in this movement aren’t just “young and minority.” They are young and old, male and female, city- and rural-dwelling, LGBTQ and straight, and fairly racially diverse. What they largely have in common is a great desire to grow diversified products using organic production methods.

Conventional production, in general, is based on agribusiness control, consolidation, and distribution of monoculture and industrial livestock production. And yes, often the next generation of land-owning white males are in the position to take over these ever-expanding operations. There are powerful socioeconomic barriers that exist to keep women and minorities underrepresented in the large-scale monoculture production systems that still dominate American agriculture. The next generation, without connections to land and capital, are much more represented in small-scale, diversified, low-input farming methods, including local and organic, and are typically engaged in direct marketing.

And, as Rosenberg and East point out, large-scale farms do get a disproportionate percentage of government subsidies, but they are also disproportionately represented in USDA agricultural census data. To reverse this trend, we need income caps for receiving subsidies and increased support for the type of farming that is accessible and appealing to landless farmers: low-input, organic, diversified production—ultimately resulting in access to fresher and healthier food for all of us.

The 2012 agricultural census data were collected more than six years ago, and never fully accounted for entrepreneurs who don’t own land. Young farmers who lease land are less likely to fill out the USDA agriculture survey, both because their physical address is more likely to change and because their future in farming is so tenuous. I wonder how many farmers filled out the NYFC census, but not the USDA census?

It has taken me a decade, while working full-time off the farm, to secure farmland and build a viable agricultural business. How many young farmers are in this process now? How many will succeed if policies don’t change? A lot has happened since the 2012 census, and that is reflected in the more recent Washington Post and New York Times articles Rosenberg and East criticize.

While the NYFC acknowledges that it is not a representative survey (it is a survey of their members), a few of Rosenberg and East’s arguments demonstrate their misinterpretation of the data. They cite the over-representation of flower and vegetable sales as a reason that the NYFC survey data are suspect. However, specialty crop production is a hallmark of diversified operations on small plots of land that sell directly to consumers. Very few farms sell only flowers, but flower sales are often part of making money while attracting pollinators and natural predators on diversified farms.

What we should really be talking about (besides whether or not a critical mass of young minority farmers exists) is the fact that, despite their real desire and attempts to farm full-time, many new farmers are failing to succeed. This is also why they are under-represented in the 2012 agricultural census. The number one reason young, beginning farmers are failing has nothing to do with producing enough food to make a decent living. Rather, no amount of premium-priced, organic flowers, vegetables, and pastured meat is going to pay for the million-dollar farmland that white men currently disproportionately own.

In the 1970s, the average price of farmland was a few hundred dollars an acre. Now, this same farmland is thousands per acre, and the land that direct marketers want to access (close to consumers) can be tens to hundreds of thousands per acre. If every capable young farmer who wanted to farm was provided long-term access to the land she needed to succeed, the face of the American farmer would shift overnight. And why wouldn’t we support this effort? Beginning and minority farmers are statistically more likely to use organic production methods in diversified operations, offering their communities the best local food.

Making a living farming should be attainable for anyone who wants to do so, regardless of age, race, gender, or wealth. Part of living in a “free country” is the ability to “pursue happiness,” which turns out for many is a call to farm. Still, the “right to farm” remains largely in the hands of wealthy, mostly white, men. And that has become a problem for everyone who wants to eat organic food.