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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Everything agriculture, most farmers had their children go off to school and then the cities. Now it’s only really people in their 50s in the fields.

As someone who has a farm and regularly asks for knowledge transfers from the older farmers around me.. it’ll be difficult when they move on.

It’s things you wouldn’t expect either, like how to install a new piston & hydraulics line on a tractor. Or how to repair an old diesel motor. Some people on HN might know that, I know some of that now. However, generally they are all older and their kids moved on. In terms of a generational knowledge gap I can think of no greater one.

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AgTech is big enough to have it's own tag on TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/tag/agtech/ It might not be interesting on the coasts, but there are a bunch of agriculture startups in midwestern places like Urbana-Champaign.

There's a difference between AgTech and actual agriculture. Farms don't need drones, apps or tractors with DRM. They need people with knowledge of biological systems and logistics.

If it makes you feel any better, I grew up in the Midwest and there was no shortage of young people going into Ag.

Specifically small agriculture too. Most investment is in huge farms, very little investment in making small agriculture (think less than 10 acres) more affordable and accessible. Most of this is policy problems in the US, but globally its also a problem.

There is growing regenerative agriculture movement that focuses on small farms. Especially works of Richard Perkins - his slogan is even "Making small farms work". He (used to) make living from 10ha's of land in northern Europe. Key was to have multiple small enterprises in the same farm that support each other, and which don't require big investments. Also selling goods straight to customers is important so there's no middlemen eating your profits.

https://www.richardperkins.co/about/

The average age of a farmer in Canada is 56

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220511/dq220...

Here in Japan, average 67.9yo. Industry is going to die.

how much is the average farmer net income? in italy, as a son of farmers i see the biggest problem being the average size of holdings, too small to live on with the peace of mind, and the really absymal ROE of the sector, below 2%, making it impossible to expanding with debt in the industry. like, i would need 1.8 M euros of capital in farming (cereals + meat calfs) to give a family a BARELY MIDDLE class lifestyle.

Average net profit is very low ($10K) but it's because majority of farmers are old small family, They also receive pension, may work on another part time job, eat their own veges, and do barter exchange. Average net profit for full-timer (under 65yo) is also lower ($30K) but to be fair local jobs salary is also tend to low,

Here, problem is that there are few newcomer to be a farmer. It's unpopular to live rural area. People in rural area are generally considered to treat newcomers unkindly. Local people grown by farmer also don't want to choose farming as a first career (but may choose after retiring, or help father's farming). Farming lands have been tend to be divided for small lands (partially thanks to WW2 lose), and generally Japan lands aren't so flat, so productivity isn't great thus income isn't great.

It's crazy really and I think one of the biggest problems our society has. Young innovative people don't have access to land as entering into the farming business requires big investment and thus capitals most people don't have access to. And it's not very attractive to take a huge loan and enter into a business that is already hard and where margins are low. Same time the suicide rates of farmers are 60% higher than non-farmers and the trend is upwards [1].

1. https://lifeinmind.org.au/news/high-rates-of-farmer-suicides...

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