Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer is an effortful process, and in farming, the stakes are high. If you fail to raise a child who can competently take over the farm, your farming legacy stops. Because of the motivation to keep one’s family on the farm, farmers have established a culture of raising competent businessmen and sound managers who, if they aren’t also sharp-eyed accounts and knowledgeable seedsmen themselves, can at least interact successfully with them—in short, all-purpose CEOs.

Through my work with >300 generational family farms across many states and provinces, I’m describing a pattern I see used on farms where farming is the lion’s share of the family’s income1, and that are on their 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th generation. I’ve discussed this pattern with farm patriarchs and matriarchs. It isn’t universally followed—every kid is as unique as every farm—but a path approximately like this has been successful for a majority of farm sons and farm daughters that I’ve seen stick the landing. I believe this pattern should be celebrated, and that it can be exported and used by other families hoping to raise their children to be curious, competent stewards of value.

Childhood Chores

Strong beginnings make strong work ethics, and farm families have plenty of work to go around in the first place. Children are involved in chores from a young age, including riding along before they can walk. Some chores are passive: “hand me the wrenches as I ask for them, and listen as I narrate the repair work I’m doing.” Some chores are joint projects: “I will mix the cement and you will trowel it level, so water will drain that way.” As the child gets older, more and more chores are self-motivated: “you are in charge of building a rain guard over this gas shed, let me know what supplies you need before I go to town on Tuesday.” And once the child can drive: “you are in charge of replacing the catwalks around this pump, your budget is $250.”

When a farmer’s kid is working with non-family adult workers on a crew, the kid is pulled aside before work begins. “Don’t ever work less hard than the employees. I hope you can work harder than them. But you must, at the very minimum, keep up.” Being spoiled is so far out of the question, that the farmer can’t even tolerate the perception of his kids being spoiled. As far as laziness is concerned, a farmer’s kid must be above reproach.

Driving lessons, typically on obsolete and slow equipment, are given earlier than city parents would feel comfortable with—but teens who can operate machinery can be more helpful than teens who can’t. (Driving and safety lessons go hand-in-hand!) A lynchpin of the childhood chores assigned to farmkids is that they benefit both the child and the farm. These kids don’t have time to doomscroll. There are enough real jobs to delegate, that the concept of makework is something only found in schools.

Open to Skipping School

Speaking of school, farm parents are not afraid to hold their kids out of school for a critical week or two per year. Legend has it that the school year used to mirror the farm season, and school started after fall harvest and finished before spring planting. As the farming portion of the US population shrinks and shrinks2, the school year has metastasized into early fall and late spring, and now overlaps some critical farming timeframes.

Farm parents are willing to call their kids in sick to school to help with harvest, planting, or both. Whether this is done in cooperation with the school or not depends on the parents and the school. Some parents discuss with teachers in advance to please send a week’s worth of work home, and the child is expected to do makeup work in the evenings. In schools where this isn’t tolerated, kids are kept out of school for harvest or other crunch-times through daily sick call-ins. They then either catch up on their missed work after returning, or simply don’t do it.

In all cases, it is understood that a critical farm week will teach a child more important life skills than a random, generic school week.

4-H for Leading Meetings

As much as most farmers would love to tend to their corner of the world in peace and solitude, meetings are a fact of life. Whether it’s zoning meetings, banker meetings, natural resources board meetings, meetings to arrange crop sales or to coordinate work among their own staff, no farmer can operate as an island.

4-H is a nationwide co-ed club for youth probably most famous for youth livestock projects and county fairs3. Participation begins as early as age 5, and all members learn the source of the 4 H’s in the name: “I pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, and my Health to better living; for my club, my community, my country, and my world.” The club’s motto is “Learn by Doing,” and it shows. The youngest members will begin with small projects like raising rabbits and showing zucchinis they grew. As they progress, they’ll show canning, baking, and lego robotics projects at the fair. By high school, they are breeding, raising, and judging steers, which are then sold at auction as meat.

But in addition to livestock showing, technical skills, and project management which are wrangled in project meetings, 4-H clubs require a bi-monthly business meeting. The business meeting is run by the youth club members, who elect from among themselves a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and historian. The meetings follow Robert’s Rules of Order. Kids are thus exposed to the standard US business meeting format4 starting at 5, and will be running meetings by 14 or 15. When they need to seek an exception at their first county zoning meeting as an adult, they already feel familiar with the format. The battle will be less uphill because they’re fluent.

Apprenticeships Scouting Other Crops

One of the most labor-intensive parts of farming is crop scouting. This is the job of visiting fields each week to monitor which insects are flying, which have hatched, and whether there are enough insects in the field to warrant action. National and regional businesses, as well as owner-operator or independent crop consultants provide this service to farmers, usually on a pay-per-acre basis. All organization types of crop scouting companies are eager to hire seasonal workers. Apprentice-level scouts will use sweep nets and pheromone traps to count insects, and record their measurements. Later-career scouts will also make control recommendations for the farmer. Depending on the crop, scouting-as-a-service can also include soil sampling for nutrient analysis, tissue sampling for nutrient analysis, and fertilizer recommendations based on those analyses.

Every young farmer needs practice working with people off-farm, and taking direction from someone other than dad. These apprentice level crop scouting jobs offer object-level experience in entomology and soil science. At the same time, they offer social networks with other ag-adjacent teens. And most importantly, they offer mentorships with the later career scout leading their team.

Experience with multiple management styles can help teens form a sense of what management styles are most successful, and what styles might fit their personality as they contemplate leading teams in the future. This is both true, and a euphemism for “teens and their own parents aren’t always ideal coworkers for each other. Don’t force something that’s not going to come easy.”

Crop scouting internships aren’t a perfect fit for each farm family, but there are other ways to gain the equivalent experience. For instance, I know an Iowa farmer and a Kansas farmer who traded sons for a summer.

College

Farm kids intending to take over the family farm go to college5. The most common major is animal science, followed by ag econ (formerly agricultural economics, and now called applied economics)6. Agronomy and plant science are popular. Engineering (mechanical, or what used to be called agricultural engineering, which now goes by ‘biological systems engineering’) is a good fit for technically-minded sons and daughters. In the last 15 years, software engineering and communications have joined the list.

Some farm kids head to tech school rather than a 4-year university, but this is much less common. Somewhat rare but still worth mentioning, especially since it used to be more common7, was a military enrollment preceding college. Air Force (especially for those in aerial application regions) and Navy tend(ed) to be the preferred branches, and I believe farm kids often got mechanic roles because of all the accumulated experience from the ‘childhood chores’ section.

High school sweetheart marriages are less common than they were in our grandparents’ era, so for the majority of farm kids who haven’t partnered up before college, college is the expected time and place to find a mate.

Working Off-Farm

After college, farm “kids” are universally, explicitly expected to find an off-farm job for 2-4 years. This often is a job in the broader agricultural industry, but not necessarily. Many agronomy and plant science majors will find opportunities in seed, pesticide, or fertilizer sales. The ag econ majors might be working at a bank or at Farm Credit, at a crop insurance agency, or another “desk job” that serves ag. But this job might also be software engineering, or management in retail8.

Working for 2-4 years off-farm is the primary part of this life path that is discussed explicitly, and given as advice to younger farm parents. The life skills accumulated by working for non-family members are irreplaceable. Typically, the off-farm job is in a larger company than the family farm, and working in a larger firm is necessary for understanding the motivations of non-family workers. Learning to work for a manager is a necessary step before one can be a good manager to one’s own employees.

Returning to the Farm

After college and after a few years working off-farm, the young farmer will return to the family farm. At this point, the common path diverges as different families settle into different equilibria for managing the farm before, during, and after succession. With a multitude of working solutions instead of one clear generalized path, my observational distillation ends here.

Unless..!

Of course, all of this flies out the window if there’s an unexpected death. Then a child will come back to take over the farm regardless of how much or how little off-farm experience they’ve notched.

Succession Notes

At least in the US and Canada, farmers tend to raise all of their ag-curious kids following this pattern. Childhood chores are implemented before children have preferences, and before they have meaningful preferences. (“Of course you can be a ballerina, but first you have to muck the stalls.”) Once they’re older, if a child doesn’t have an aptitude or interest for farming, they follow whatever life path seems right to them. But generally, any kid who has any interest in agriculture at all, or even a lack of alternative interest, will be guided onto this path.

In some families one child takes over a farm. In other families, two or more siblings might form a partnership. Sometimes one kid will take over the farm but carve out a side business (such as crop scouting, seed sales, pesticide or fertilizer sales, or field applications for-hire) for their sibling(s). Other times, a farm may have failed to grow at a pace that allows the operation to run independently, and the farm will be sold off or merged with a neighbor’s. Even in this tragic case, the kids will be able to step into another industry with a lot of skills, and more importantly, a mindset of curiosity and stewardship.

Because I see successes from this rearing pattern whether the kids take over the farm, found a farm-adjacent business, or move laterally into another industry, I suspect that this pattern may serve families well whether they are in agriculture, or not. If you have any questions, I’m happy to share more. And if you would like apprenticeship referrals, reach out!

Thanks to Mike Riggs for feedback, and Abby at fieldnotesonprogress.substack.com and Rhishi at https://www.metaldoglabs.ai/ for feedback, and providing some sources for trends I only knew by anecdote.

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https://faeis.cals.vt.edu/resources/presentations/nacta2023/NACTA_Poster_2023.pdf