Analysis

By STEVE BROWN

Capital Press

OLYMPIA -- These young people may not look like your traditional farmers. Many of them sport dreadlocks, bushy beards and body piercings. But nearly every one of them wore work shoes or mud boots to a recent get-together. Not a sandal anywhere.

Many are at ground level in their careers, facing challenges that America's aging farmers had to deal with a generation ago: access to land, capital and markets.

Amid the music and merriment at the Washington Young Farmer (Apple) Squeeze on Oct. 3, several talked about what their generation of small farmers needs.

Chandler Briggs, local organizer for the Washington Young Farmers Coalition, said land prices are high and opportunities for leasing are limited.

"As a community and as a nation, we have to decide if it's important to feed ourselves good food," he said. "We're at a fork in the road, whether we put energy and financial support to programs to get people onto farmland."

Briggs said he's grateful for the support he and others have received through Washington State University Extension and the Washington State Department of Agriculture. "As we become ready to farm, we need those networks to continue."

When Sarah Rocker and other small farmers west of Olympia saw the need for a farmers' market near them, they started one. But it's "frustrating," she said. Local residents talk about their desire for fresh, local food, yet grocery parking lots are packed while farmers' markets aren't.

"People need to put their dollars where their mouths are," she said. Some customers express "sticker shock" when they buy a cucumber, not understanding that farmers deserve to be paid for their work.

Making a living at farming is a challenge at nearly every level, and young farmers learn that firsthand.

Sam Thrasher, who farms in Twisp, Wash., said she finds plenty of supportive customers, but her partner operates an excavation company for added income. Rocker also works in town so her husband can farm. Briggs, unmarried, said he supports himself with farming, but works a part-time job to build up savings.

Another common theme among the young farmers: benefiting from others' experience. Many of them started as apprentices or interns. They keep learning "by trial and error," as Thrasher said, or from blogs and agricultural journalism.

Briggs said electronic media is not the only source of information. "Whenever people come over to my place, they always look through my copy of the Capital Press or a magazine."

Joel Sokoloff earned a liberal arts degree, now he "learns from comrades." Rocker's husband, Erik Hagen, was an ag major at The Evergreen State College. Now, through Enterprise for Equity, a nonprofit organization that helps beginning businesses, he compares notes with other farmers.

The social support system is not only enthusiastic, evidenced by the laughter and energy at the squeeze and other recent events, it is also strong.

"This is how we can disseminate information among a diversified community," Rocker said. Co-ops and the Grange strengthen those connections.

A Grange member herself, Rocker said it would be a natural connection for her fellow farmers to be attracted to an organization that was originally established for farmers to support each other.

Online

www.washingtonyoungfarmers.org/

www.thegreenhorns.net/

www.enterpriseforequity.org/

www.youngfarmers.org/

Shifting trend

USDA statistics show that the nation's farmers are aging overall, with an average age of 57 for principal operators in the most recent survey of 2007.

However, between 2002 and 2007, Washington state experienced a 32 percent increase in the number of principal farm operators 34 years old and younger.

During the same period, the number of all farmers under 25 -- principal operators or not -- more than tripled nationally. Those 34 or under more than doubled.

Source: Washington Young Farmers Coalition