A Legacy Worth Keeping

Easy or not easy, farming is a lifestyle. As the farming industry has grown, farming has changed dramatically from what it once was. What was once a family affair has now become a commercial business. With an economy as demanding as America's small farming is becoming a thing of the past and large commercial farms are becoming the new norm.

Smaller family operated farms are becoming harder and harder to find. Nearly 80 years ago at its peek, farming was everywhere. There were nearly 7 million farms across America, each around 170 acres. 75 years after that, through the decline of farming, the number of farms dropped by nearly 4 million and more than doubling the acres per farm.

Small and large farms operate very differently. A small farm these days milks only a few hundred cows and only grow enough crops to suffice what they need for themselves and to sell and little bit. A typical large commercial farm milks a few thousand cows and grow more than enough crops to suffice themselves and to sell plenty to companies. Some may ask, how do they possibly milk all these cows? The operations work essentially the same. Machines. The types vary but they all work the same whether they use the tie stall method, parlors, carousels, or robots.

Another thing small farms are lacking that the large farms have is help and the means of being able to continue. When the age of a typical small family farmer is about 55, he's not going to be continuing for much longer which means if no one is there to take over the farm he is going to have to sell. In this economy that's what's happening to most small farms. There is no one to pass along the farms to because the kids had to go out and find new jobs to be able to keep their families alive. Large farms have the ability hire people to help run their growing farms. Because these farms are being run like large business operations they have the means of being able to continue.

When farming was a family tradition, farmers were able to teach their kids valuable lie skills they probably couldn't learn anywhere else. They taught their kids the value of a hard work ethic and how it will help them everywhere they go. Farmers also taught them the value of persistence, responsibility, looking toward the future with an open mind, to love without fear and that nothing ever comes easy. As a farm kid you also learn the value of a dollar and how that money isn't everything.

The farming industry has changed drastically from what it once was. There isn't a whole lot that we can do to stop that from happening. Small farms are going to keep disappearing and large farms are going to keep growing. Things are going to be different; we have to figure out whether it is a good thing or not, whether we can survive knowing what once was is now gone.