younger farmers under 30yrs old

[MBFarmer1]

I have been reading this forum for quite some time but haven't found alot worth replying to until now. I fit into this category of 30 and under and I believe there are many opportunities in the future. It is just a matter of identifying them. In regard to the earlier posts re: Farm Groups and the participation of younger farmers I see the lack of interest as a symptom rather than a problem. I recently joined a group here in MB at the urging of a neighbour. After attending the first meeting I could see why young guys might not be interested. The meeting revolved around government programs, payments, and how they can help us. No discussion at all how we can market our produce better, how we can move up the food chain, how we can avoid the mega food companies, new innovative production ideas, nothing. YOung farmers today, in my mind anyway, are interested in what they can do to inrease profitability on their own, not what others can do to increase it for them. Just my two cents.

[Jagfarms]

I am a 34 so I am a few years over over 30. I started farming at the age of 26 when my dad had a heart attack I came home to help out. I left a good paying job to come back to the farm. For the first 3 years I went back to my job in the winter time. In 1999 I purchased a truck and super B grain trailers and started custom grain hauling in our local area. It has been working out not to bad so far.

A lot of the farmers in our area are older and I provided a service that I would shovel thier grain for them at an extra cost on top of the hauling cost. It worked good right from the 1st year I started. It is hard to keep up and find hired help to help out in the farming season to help with the trucking. We were shoveling over 300 bins a year the first few years. Our customer base kept getting bigger and we are not shoveling as much grain these days.

I think any young farmer who would start custom grain hauling and shovel bins out as well will have all the work they can handle.

In our area here in South West sask I think there is there is several different things a young farmer can do in the the form of custom farm work to make to extra money to help out with the farm income. Spraying, seed cleaning, coral cleaning, mechanic work on the farm ect.

It has helped me so far to keep farming and pay the bills. I do not know how much longer I can do it. Working 80 or more hours a week 300 days out of the year. If I just had to rely on my farm income I would have been finished 4 years ago.

My goal is someday to just farm and not have to rely on other income to keep the farm going. I do not know if it will ever happen but I love farming and I hope I can farm for many more years.


Jason

[r.reid]

I'm 26 years old, married, and farm with my Dad. I also work welding in the winter for an equiptment mfg company. Between me, dad, and my grandfather we seed around 4000 acres. My dad also raises 200 cow/calf pairs. These past few years have been tough, but I see a good future in ag. We just have to remember that some things are out of our control (frost, drought, bumper crops in other countries, border closures, etc...). Lately we have had all of these hits. We are due for a good run, real soon. The so called experts also say that food and will be a major shortage in the near future due to the doubling of the worlds population. We shall see. I also think that better uses for grain and staw will be coming shortly (biodisel, ethenol, low trans fat hybrids), we have to PUSH for this to happen sooner rather than later. I'm sorry things didn't work out for you ALLFARMER. Good luck in the future.