Farming isn’t getting any easier given low grain prices, rising costs and unpredictable weather, yet many young people in southwest Kansas are staying on the family farm and statewide farming groups are working to further cultivate the younger generation’s interest in agriculture.
As The Garden City Telegram reports, Shane and Zach Knoll of Holcomb inherited their family’s farming operation in their mid-20s, after their father died in 2011, and they have been managing it ever since.
Down the road in Plymell, 22-year-old Kyle Deaver said he never imagined doing anything but farming.
Statewide organizations like the Kansas Farm Bureau and Kansas Farmers Union are working to develop and grow that youthful zeal for farming.
The Kansas Farm Bureau uses a traveling cow to teach young people about the dairy industry and the Kansas Farmers Union established the Kansas Beginning Farmers Coalition to support the state’s agriculture industry through education, support and lobbying.