Age, succesion planning & wildlife values of Upper Midwest landowners

It is well known that farmers are getting older; in the United States the average age of farmers is 58.3 years old and the rate of increase in age is accelerating. The average farmer age increased 10 years from 47.6 years old to 57.1 in a four year period (2003-2007). It is not necessarily a problem that farmers are getting older because farmers often retire later than workers in other parts of the labor force. The concern is that aging farmers are not being replaced by younger farmers since start-up costs have become insurmountable for many beginning farmers. Consequently, the age distribution of farmers has become highly skewed towards the older end of the spectrum. All the projections call for a massive transfer of land in the next decade which can have significant consequences as well as opportunities for wildlife management. For example, paid conservation programs may be especially attractive to older farmers who do not want to quit farming “cold turkey” by providing income for enrolling some land in these programs as well as reduce their work load. Our surveys of landowners in North Dakota, South Dakota and western Minnesota included questions asking landowners about their future plans for their land when they are no longer able to run their farm/ranch. About 54% of the landowners do not have any plans to change the size of their operations in the next 10 years, about 7% plan to decrease their operations and 31% plan to increase (8% undecided). These findings were strongly related to landowner age and current size of their farm/ranch. Most landowners (55%) have a strong desire to pass their farm/ranch operations on to family members and most (63%) were interested in conservation programs that would allow family members to continue with current farming/ranching operations. Most landowners’ future plans were not related to landowners’ land use and wildlife values, but for a small subset of landowners, land use and wildlife values were related to their succession plans.