Summary: Aging on the Farm

Glen Hargis rises at 4:30, same as he has for fifty years. His knees are bone-on-bone. His son moved to Denver. His daughter teaches in Kansas City. Neither is coming back to run the 640-acre ranch in southeastern Montana, in the family since his grandfather homesteaded it. The land is worth north of two million dollars. His checking account holds enough for this month’s feed bill. He has not seen a doctor in three years. The nearest one is 80 miles away.

The average age of all U.S. farm producers is 58.1, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Producers 65 and older make up more than 40 percent of farmers and ranchers, their share increasing 12 percent since 2017 while producers aged 35 to 64 declined 9 percent. Approximately 70 percent of American farmland will change hands in the next 20 years. Many operators have no succession plan, because retirement on a working farm is not a concept the occupation was built around.

The financial paradox confounds outsiders. Glen’s land is worth two million; by cash flow, he struggles. Forty-three percent of farms had positive net cash income; the rest broke even or lost money. Farm operators rarely have employer-sponsored insurance. A major illness can force the sale of land held for generations.

Agriculture is among the most dangerous industries. Older farmers have higher fatality rates from equipment accidents, falls, and animal injuries. The suicide rate among farmers is 3.5 times the general population, with physical health problems the most common circumstance, highest among farmers over 65. Financial pressure, isolation, and a culture that has trained men to never admit weakness converge in a population without adequate mental health infrastructure. An American Farm Bureau survey found 61 percent still consider stigma a barrier to seeking help.

Farm wives carry a double and often triple shift of agricultural labor, household management, and caregiving when a spouse’s health fails. Women farmers report depressive symptoms at rates up to four times higher than men.

What would help is not mysterious: USDA transition planning assistance, rural caregiver support scaled to actual geography, and farm-specific mental health programs like New York FarmNet’s kitchen-table counseling model. Seventy percent of American farmland will change hands in the next two decades. The people managing that transition are doing it largely alone, largely in pain, and largely without the support the scale of the problem demands.