US: Study raises concern over aging growers

LaSalle Florists has been growing for 82 years, but current owner John LaSalle, who says he started at age 3 in the business his grandfather launched in 1934, is in his 60s, and looking ahead to the day when he might want to retire.

“It’s just logical thinking,” says LaSalle, who like many farmers around the state is looking ahead at the future of the third-generation family business. “I want to do other things with the last 20 years of my life.”

Farmers aged 65 and older operate 30 percent of the farms in Massachusetts, and only 8 percent of those 2,333 farmers have someone under 45 managing the farm with them, according to a new report by American Farmland Trust and Land for Good, a Keene, N.H.-based organization specializing in farmland access, tenure and transfer.

The “Gaining Insights, Gaining Access” study, using Census of Agriculture data from 2002, 2007 and 2012 also found that Massachusetts had fewer farm operators under age 45 in 2012 than in a decade.

“It was a real wake-up call to see how few farmers age 65-plus have a next generation working on the farm with them,” said Cris Coffin, policy director for Land for Good. “How and to whom this land and farm infrastructure transfers will have enormous impact on the future of farming in New England.”

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