Survey shows kids aren’t interested in farming

A new survey shows many Iowa farmers don’t want their kids to follow in their footsteps. The survey by the extension service at Iowa State University found that just over half of the state’s farmers would tell their kids to do something else. I-S-U Sociology professor Peter Korsching says at the top of the list of reasons he found finances. Agriculture is a risky business, and these days it’s expensive, he says. With land prices going up, equipment costing more and commodity prices going down especially in this year of bumper crops, he says you don’t even earn back the cost of prpoduction and it’s not a good time to get into farming. Korsching says they had about 15-hundred responses to the survey, and many said they wanted better opportunities for their children. He says he was not surprised by the results. He says the trends have been going this direction for quite a while, becoming tougher for young people to get into agriculture because of the big investment required. Two-thirds of those responding said a lack of available farmland could keep young people from farming, and 95-percent said the spouse of a beginning farmer would have to work off the farm to support the operation.