When we think about farmers, we don’t necessarily think of them as young. Even McDonald was old. But that may be changing.
“We’ve seen a lot of farmers age out, sell their land, but there’s kind of a new generation of people of all ages who are very interested in learning to work the land and try and make a living out of it," said Kelly Young, an agroecologist with the University of Arizona’s Cooperative Extension in Maricopa County.
Young is working with millennials returning to the fields who are trying to flip the script.
We went to look for one of those millennial farmers here in the Valley and found Wes Kerr, a 31-year-old fourth-generation farmer who has a thousand cows on his dairy farm in west Buckeye.
Kerr became interested in genetics and figured out a way to genetically modify his Holstein cows so they no longer grow horns. Yes, it sounds a little strange. But he said it makes his farm safer and ultimately more productive without animals that can hurt each other.
We discussed what it was like to be a farmer on the younger side of the demographic and whether he would advise others to follow in his footsteps.
