Drilling not Farming

Drilling not Farming

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Matt Brechwald's a farmer and podcaster who has grave concerns about today's kids not wanting to follow their parents tradition of farming. I asked him why a kid on a successful farm wouldn't want to continue. "Successful may mean that mom and dad are able to support themselves on the farm but there may not be enough income or enough land on that farm for the kid to come back and be supported. I know of another farmer and he said that his kids wanted to come back and farm so he was going to take a city job because there wasn't one to be enough revenue from the farm to support both families and he wanted his kids to have the ability to farm so he was going to go back to work. Sometimes the successful farm means that it is in the black, people are making a profit but there may not be enough revenue there to support to families. And another phenomenon that we are seeing especially in places where there are large booms in minerals and oil, Texas is a good example, that it is very difficult to get people to choose farming because the upfront costs to get into another very high and there are a lot of barriers to entry and the farm income is very low in comparison to other jobs working in the oil fields. So you see people coming off the farms and choosing to go work in the oil fields because they can make 3 to 4 times the money. They don't have to buy equipment, they don't have to depend on Mother Nature and they get a steady paycheck.
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