SILVER CITY, Iowa (KMTV) — It's harvest time and Larry O'Rourke is in the field. He has been farming land near Silver City, Iowa since the mid-1960s when his family moved to the area.
Full disclosure: He’s been farming my family's land since the early '70s and I’ve known him my whole life.
Now, Larry is about to turn 70. While he has no immediate plans to retire from farming, I wanted to talk to him about the future of ag in the Midwest.
“When I started renting from your family, I was still 17,” Larry told me.
He was a senior in high school when he started farming my great-great-aunt's land and he's still farming it along with his family farm.
Earlier this year, Larry retired from his off-farm job at an agricultural bank.
I asked him about the next generation of farmers.
“You know, what seems like is happening is, a lot of farmers are farming longer. The equipment's better. It's not as hard of work as it used to be. So, you can farm when you're older. But most of it seems to be going through consolidation as most segments of the ag industry are,” he said.
Fewer families in agriculture, means the ones who stay in the business have huge operations.
I talked to Kitt Tovar Jensen, a staff attorney and manager of the Beginning Farmers Center at Iowa State University.
"There are a lot of people who want to get into farming, but the issue is — can they? Do they have the resources to — with land values and other costs rising it's just, a lot of young folks, beginning farmer types, are having trouble getting into farming," said Jensen.
I asked Larry if it's even possible to start from scratch in a traditional ag operation today.
“I don't think so, I mean you read of some individuals who have started up, just on their own, but I don't know of anybody. It's probably possible but it's unusual,” he said.
Larry isn’t slowing down anytime soon but says it’s up to his kids what they want to do with the farm when the time comes.
"We just say, Nancy and I, just say that whenever it's time, the kids can do whatever they want with the farm, that'll be up to them."
For more information on the Beginning Farmers Center visit the website: beginningfarmer.iastate.edu
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