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The average farmer
is 51 years old and male. Farming with someone, a spouse, sibling or
parents, is necessary today with the increased complexity of agriculture.
Because farming is so much more complicated, the farmer has to possess
many more skills than his farming father or grandfather before him.
He has to know about marketing, genetics, pesticides, and with the high
finance involved in agriculture today, he has to be an excellent money
manager. Because of the scale of many farms today, farmers have to know
how to manage people. They also have to be able to follow complicated
government regulations. Farmers today are
struggling to manage and grow more crops to spread the risk.
Farmers today have
typically looked at investing in some value-added ventures like the
Dakota Growers Pasta Plant or Northern Plains Premium Beef. According to the
1997 Census of Agriculture, about half of the farmers work off-farm.
Seventy-four percent say that farming is their principal occupation.
The number of small (500-999 acres) and large (2,000 acres plus) farms is growing with middle-sized farms (1,000-1,999) decreasing. The number of mid-sized farms is still slightly larger than the number of large farms.
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Today's
typical farmer
Another
emerging trend is a move back to livestock. The number of producers
raising livestock has dropped over the last 20 years with farmers not
wanting to mess with taking care of animals. Many farmers stuck to raising
grains. Today grain farmers are showing more interest in dairy and swine
operations as a way to add value to their grain. Feeding grain to livestock
is a basic value-added process that doesn't involve building a factory
to produce a product that would then have to be sold in competition
with goods manufactured by large companies.