Who is Next In Line??

Who will be the next generation? Will we have someone thats wants to carry on this lifestyle? There are so many questions just like this and the answers are grimm at best. In recent studies, numbers are reported at over 60% of current operations are without a successor in place. Can you imagine that when a large number of our current producers hit the age or the time they have to "hang it up" that there is literally no one in line to continue and pick right up where they left off. As a first generation rancher this blows my mind, what I wouldn't have done to be able to have so much of the foundation already laid for me, the struggles, the debt, the hardships, so many things I could have possibly forgone instead of fighting to the brink of disaster many times. The struggle and hardships that come with building an operation truly from the ground up are enough to bring you to the point of complete exhaustion and ultimate demise. Enough about our struggles what lies at the bottom of the lack of motivation to carry on family operations for many generations to come? I think you could look at the landscape of Agriculture and quickly see it is ridden with complications that offer easier ways out by simply not carrying on.

Let's start with Land. The cost to acquire more vs the large financial gain to simply opt out. So many see the huge financial burdens placed on producers today and then see the way out by simply selling land for development. In Florida alone one could have purchased land years ago and today triple, quadruple, heck you could put a 10 times multiplier on your original purchase price and simply slip away wirth a large pocket full of cash and a lot less headaches by simply "opting out" of carrying on in Agriculture.

The easy way out mentality or the "overnight success" stories that innodate the minds of the next generations everytime they turn on a device. "See how I made 10 million in a year", "post 2 times a day and make 20k a month" literally everywhere you look there is another guru with the fastest way to make millions. Is social media really real though...we have AI you can rent a plane or jet for a couple hours and take hundreds of pictures for content that could be posted for months. Want to show off a car? Heck you rent a supercar for a day and change 10 times and you look like you have the latest fad car. We rarely see the true hardships it takes to build an iconic brand and a business empire. We literally condition our youth to take the easy road, and we teach instant gratification, something that rarely if ever proves to lead to true happiness and success. 

The villainization of Agriculture. As of recently now the farmers and ranchers many used to look up to for their work ethic and honest way of making a living, have become the demons of climate change and the reason the world is "dying". The push to get everyone eating bugs, and fake meat has left the people who truly feed this country as some sort of lower class not worthy of respect or continuation. Why? Why is it we now demonize something that literally has been around since the beginning of time. We as a human race have figured out ways to cultivate food and domestic animals in order to provide food year round and under watchful eye instead of relying on the hunter/gatherer model. This attack on Agriculture has left many next in line looking for something else to do in order to avoid the huge costs, rising social pressures and potential for large Govt forced penalties and taxes.

This is just a glimpse into the growing laundry list of things forcing the younger generations to "look outside the farm". If we are not careful this could lead to us looking at fake meat printed in a lab, and veggies made of ground up bugs and colored and smashed into some mold to mimick the real thing.