How to Grow a New Generation of Farmers: Forgive Their Student Loans
With total student loan debt nearing $1.4 billion and the average recent college graduate owing $30,000 in loans, plenty of young Americans are having a tough time making ends meet after earning a diploma. But a coalition of young farmers say the student debt crisis is about to strike the breadbasket too, unless Congress acts on a bill to help keep it from happening.
At a time when the nation’s farmers are getting older—and there are fewer of them now than a decade ago—student debt is the top reason young people are turning away from farming, according to the National Young Farmers Coalition.
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“We’re seeing people who just can’t get started in [agriculture], even if they want to,” Eric Hansen, a policy analyst for the NYFC, told TakePart. “They’re starting out with net-negative wealth. That really compromises your ability” to get the supplies, equipment, or land needed to grow food.
NYFC is in the midst of a push to have Congress include farmers on the list of public servants, just like doctors, teachers, or members of the military. Public servant status would qualify farmers for federal student loan relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. The program wipes out the balance of people who have worked full-time in the profession for 10 years while also making income-adjusted payments toward their loans.
There’s legislation before Congress that would grant farmers public servant status: the Young Farmer Success Act of 2015, a bipartisan bill introduced last fall. The bill has been languishing since then, with little movement expected before the presidential election.
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The problem is clear: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, the average American farmer is 58, and just 6 percent of farmers are under age 35. At the same time, as the farming workforce ages, retires, and dies, 63 percent of the nation’s farmland will need new tenants within the next 25 years.
“Veterinarians, nurses, public servants of many kinds receive debt relief. Across Europe, young people enter university without fear of life-crippling debts,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, founder and director of the Greenhorns, a grassroots organization that promotes, recruits, and advocates for young farmers and ranchers.
With student loans, young farmers “are finding that, one, they cannot afford to farm and pay down their loans at the same time, or two, their debt out of college is preventing them from leveraging capital to start and grow a farm business,” said von Tscharner Fleming. “Even a relatively modest amount of debt, $10,000 or less, can have a dramatic influence on the success of a beginning farm.”
Part of the challenge is that, like many other professions in the 21st century, farming has become “a highly technical and complex occupation,” said von Tscharner Fleming. “For many young farmers, the scientific, mechanical, business, and/or marketing skills learned in college are critical to the success of their farms.”
Unlike most other jobs a recent grad might take, farming depends a lot on credit—to purchase a $30,000 tractor or combine, say, or for yearly crop seeds and livestock, or the land itself. Rather than “invest back into that farm, the dollars are going off-farm to pay off their student loans,” said Hansen. “Or they don’t have time to invest in the farm because they have to work off-farm” at a second job, perhaps substitute teaching or selling farm equipment, to make loan payments and make ends meet.
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In the year since its introduction, Hansen said, the Young Farmers Success Act has attracted bipartisan support, but it hasn’t been the subject of hearings or made it out of the House Committee on Higher Education and Workforce Training. Still, Hansen is bullish on its prospects—he believes it’s likely to get included in a larger spending bill on college—and Rep. Chris Gibson, a New York Republican who sponsored the bill, is enthusiastic about it.
“The USDA says that we need to inspire 100,000 new farmers over the next decade or we are going to get more consolidation and more imports from overseas,” Gibson told Civil Eats in late April. “If you want to be a thriving country, you have to grow and produce locally. We’re not nearly keeping up.”
At a time when network cooking shows, the farm-to-table movement, and organic food have skyrocketed in popularity, Hansen said, student-debt forgiveness is critical to reversing the agricultural equivalent of brain drain.
“We need people to produce this food,” he said, noting that young farmers are at the forefront of the environmentally sustainable and locally grown food trends. “If you are someone taking advantage of the local food movement, if you like organics in particular, young people are working in those [areas] at twice the rate” of older farmers.
Sign the Petition: Tell Congress: It’s in Your Interest! Support Student Loan Refinancing Legislation
Related stories on TakePart:
• Can a New Website Put a Stop to Student Debt Relief Scams?
• Crippled by Debt, Most Recent Grads Say College Isn’t Worth the Cost
• Here’s Why Student Loan Debt Isn’t the Real Millennial Horror Story
Original article from TakePart
