They Don't Retire: The Farmers, Fishers, and Ranchers Who Keep Working Past 65
There is a phrase that circulates in agricultural research circles, rural extension offices, and in the words of farmers themselves when asked about their futures. The phrase is simple: farmers don’t retire.
It is not a boast. It is not exactly a complaint. It is a description of something that is, by now, a documented and deeply rooted phenomenon – one that has its parallel on the water. Fishermen age in place with equal commitment to their calling, and it has its own phrase: the graying of the fleet.
Together, these two patterns tell a story that is not just about demographics, or labor markets, or the agricultural economy. It is about what happens when a person’s identity, livelihood, and sense of place fuse so completely with a piece of work that walking away from it feels less like retirement and more like a kind of death.
At the One Country Project, we’ve discussed aging in rural America. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports from the 2022 Census data that the average age of farmers increased from 48.7 years old in 1945 to 58.1 years in 2022. Today, only 9 percent of the country’s producers are 35 or younger, while nearly 45 percent are 65 or older and still farming. Compare that to the broader workforce, where just 5 percent of workers are over 65.
https://onecountryproject.substack.com/p/they-dont-retire-the-farmers-fishers
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