Laura Frerichs, 31, on her organic farm outside Hutchinson, Minn. Frerichs discovered her passion for farming about a year after she graduated from college with an anthropology degree.
MILWAUKEE - A Wisconsin factory worker worried about layoffs became a dairy farmer. An employee at a Minnesota non-profit found an escape from her cubicle by buying a vegetable farm. A nuclear engineer tired of office bureaucracy decided to get into cattle ranching in Texas.
While fresh demographic information on U.S. farmers won't be available until after a new agricultural census is done next year, there are signs that more people in their 20s and 30s are going into farming: Enrollment in university agriculture programs has increased, as has interest in farmer-training programs.
Young people are turning up at farmers markets and are blogging, tweeting and promoting their agricultural endeavors through other social media.
The young entrepreneurs typically cite two reasons for going into farming: Many find the corporate world stifling and see no point in sticking it out when there's little job security; and demand for locally grown and organic foods has been strong enough that even in the downturn they feel confident they can sell their products.
Laura Frerichs, 31, of Hutchinson, Minn., discovered her passion for farming about a year after she graduated from college with an anthropology degree. She planned to work in economic development in Latin America and thought she ought to get some experience working on a farm.
She did stints on five farms, mostly vegetable farms, and fell in love with the work. Frerichs and her husband now have their own organic farm, and while she doesn't expect it to make them rich, she's confident they'll be able to earn a living.
"There's just this growing consciousness around locally grown foods, around organic foods," she said. "Where we are in the Twin Cities, there's been great demand for that."
Farming is inherently risky: Drought, flooding, wind and other weather extremes can all destroy a year's work. And with farmland averaging $2,140 per acre across the United States but two to four times that much in the Midwest and California, startup costs can be daunting.
Still, agriculture fared better than many parts of the economy during the recession, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts record profits for farmers as a whole this year.
"People are looking at farm income, especially the increase in asset values, and seeing a really positive story about our economy," said USDA senior economist Mary Clare Ahearn, citing preliminary statistics.
"Young people are viewing agriculture as a great opportunity and saying they want to be a part of it."
That's welcome news to the government. More than 60 percent of farmers are older than age 55, and without young farmers to replace them when they retire, the nation's food supply would depend on fewer and fewer people.
"We'd be vulnerable to local economic disruptions, tariffs, attacks on the food supply, really, any disaster you can think of," said Poppy Davis, who coordinates the USDA's programs for beginning farmers and ranchers.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has called for 100,000 new farmers within the next few years, and Congress has responded with proposals that would provide young farmers with improved access to USDA support and loan programs.
One beginning farmer is Gabrielle Rojas, 34, from the central Wisconsin town of Hewitt. As a rebellious teen, all she wanted to do was leave her family's farm and find a career that didn't involve cows. But she changed her mind after spending years in dead-end jobs in a factory and restaurant.
"In those jobs I'm just a number, just a time-clock number," Rojas said. "But now I'm doing what I love to do. If I'm having a rough day or I'm a little sad because the sun's not shining or my tractor's broken, I can always go out and be by the cattle. That always makes me feel better."
Rojas got help in changing careers from an apprenticeship program paid for by the USDA, which began giving money in 2009 to universities and non-profit groups that help train beginning farmers. The grants helped train about 5,000 people the first year. This year, the USDA estimates more than twice as many benefited.
One of the groups that received a grant is Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, or MOSES. The Spring Valley, Wis., chapter teaches farming entrepreneurs how to cope with price swings and what to do in cases of catastrophic weather.
MOSES also organizes field days, where would-be farmers tour the operations of successful farms to learn and share tips. Attendance is up 20 percent this year, director Faye Jones said, and some outings that used to attract 30 or 40 people have drawn as many as 100, most between the ages of 18 and 30.
"I think for many people, farming has been a lifelong dream, and now the timing is right," she said.
Among the reasons she cited: the lifestyle, working in the fresh air and being one's own boss.
There are downsides. The work involves tough physical labor, and vacations create problems when there are crops to be harvested and cows to be milked.
In addition, many farmers need second jobs to get health insurance or make ends meet. As the USDA notes, three-fifths of farms have sales of less than $10,000 a year, although some may be growing fruit trees or other crops that take a few years to develop.
None of those factors dissuaded 27-year-old Paul Mews. He left a high-paying job as a nuclear engineer last year to become a cattle rancher in Menard, Tex. His wife's family has been ranching for generations, and Mews decided he'd much rather join his in-laws and be his own boss than continue shuffling paperwork at the plant.
"When you're self-employed, it's so much more fulfilling. You get paid what you're worth," he said.
kers and collects sugar cane from about 35,000 farmers, is the main source of income for the Warana community. Warana Cooperative Complex is hub of economic activities such as a dairy unit, a food-processing unit, a chain of department stores, poultry farming, and a series of women's co-operatives. The dairy employs 1,200 workers and collects 280,000 litres of milk per day from the 125 milk societies belonging to the dairy co-operative. The dairy co-operative, in turn, provides a series of services to its members; from veterinary aid to cattle shed design, from insemination to subsidy on animal purchases.
The Warana "Wired Village" project was initiated in 1998 by the Prime Minister's Office Information Technology (IT) Task Force. The stated goal of the project is not only to increase the efficiency and productivity of the sugar cane co-operative, but also to provide a wide range of information and services to 70 villages around Warana. The project aims in fact at giving villagers access to information in local language about crops and agricultural market prices, employment schemes from the government of Maharashtra, and educational opportunities.
Moreover, farmers can purchase fertilizer at deposits located next to the kiosks in cash or by using credit. If they buy using credit, they get a receipt for their purchase at the kiosk. Money spent on transport of the crop to the sugar factory is also entered in the system. Village information kiosks have operators who feed the data into the computers, and are generally open between daytime. Depending on the size of the village served by a kiosk, between 30 and 100 farmers visit the kiosk daily. Village kiosks have a PC with a printer and most are connected to the sugar administrative building via wireless telephony. Some of them though, are now saving information on floppy disks and bringing the disks to the sugar administrative building because they cannot afford big telephone bills. Kiosks also have email and Internet access, although connections are often very slow. Some kiosks are bypassing the sugar factory computer center and connect to the Internet through private providers.
