Will your farm be in the 97% club or the 3% club?
Will your farm be in the 97% club or the 3% club? One of the overriding goals that farmers have is that their farm operation continues on to a successor. Then why is it so difficult to get farmers to put a succession plan in place? A recent statistic stated that only 33% of all farms in this country will pass to the next generation. That number does not seem shocking. Of the farmers that are over 60 years old, representing the “current generation”, it is entirely plausible that only 1/3 of the farms transfer to the “next generation” (i.e. people aged 30-60) over the next 15-20 years when the current generation retires. The same statistic source went on to say that of the 33% of farms that transfer to the “next generation” only 10% of those will pass to a third generation. Whoa. Let’s take a second and do some math. We have roughly 2 million farms in this country. If only 1/3 transfer to the “next generation”, then that means we drop to 660,