Down on the farm no more

By the staircase in Johnny and Janice Coder's home hang 21 aged black-and-white photographs: weddings and family gatherings going back six generations.

"They were all in farming, 100 percent," says Mr. Coder proudly, as his wife points to the photos - parents and grandparents and grandparents of grandparents.

Soon that will change.

Besides themselves, only one cousin in their two extended families still farms. And none of the Coders' five children wants to take over their 900 acres of corn and soybeans, just east of Ames, Iowa.

"It's the end of the line for us," says Coder, now in his 50th year of farming and starting to think about retirement.

Across rural America, the Coders' story is a familiar one. Farmers are older on average than ever, and it's not always apparent who will take their place. As their numbers dwindle, operations get bigger and control of the nation's farmland becomes concentrated in fewer hands.

These trends are intensifying a longstanding debate about the future of farming in the developed world. To some, the decline in farm numbers reflects the natural evolution of better technology and a competitive marketplace. To others, it represents a serious threat to rural communities, food supply, and environment.

This week, economists and sociologists at a conference here in Ames discussed how to keep a new generation of Americans on the farm.

"The debate has to be framed around the public good vs. individual benefit," says Paul Lasley, a sociologist at Iowa State University and a speaker at the conference. "Would rural Iowa be better off if we only had half as many farms? Maybe large, fully integrated systems can deliver food cheaper, but we ought to be talking about long-term stability."

Already, the numbers look stark. By 1997 (the latest figures available), the United States had more than three times as many senior farmers (65 and over) as young farmers (35 and under). That's a dramatic shift from 20 years earlier, when the two groups were roughly equal. Similarly, Iowa has seen a huge flip-flop: twice as many seniors tend the land as young farmers - the reverse of the picture 20 years ago.

Several factors explain the change, economists say. Farmers are living longer, and often depend on the farm for their retirement income. Beginning farmers face increasingly tough barriers to acquiring land and becoming profitable.

Tough times on the farm are hardly new, many observers point out. The story of civilization, after all, involves people leaving the land in search of opportunity. "We've gone from having 95 percent of the population on farms to having 5 percent, which allows us to have huge amounts of nonfarm goods and services," says Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues in Churchville, Va. "Farms today are larger, but they're still essentially family farms. And they're better managed than they used to be, both for sustainability and for safety of production."

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