A blog reader reached out yesterday with a wonderful heartfelt ideat about starting late into farming.  Because of the space I occupy in this whole tribe, I'm almost besieged with yearning older folks, many fairly wealthy, who went to the city and now want to return to the country.

             For many, they left the country because they couldn't see a way to make a living or because others told them farming wasn't a credible vocation.  But here they are, turning 60, ready to scratch that farming itch.  For the first time in life they have enough equity to actually acquire land, but the energy to actually develop it isn't there anymore.  Or at least enough to pull it off.

             The idea this gentleman presented to me was an agency that would act as a vetting and clearinghouse to create contractual agreements, mate up the right partners, and facilitate an inter-generational farming arrangement.  Poor young people could get in as partners to the elders' equity and the elders could offer helping hands as benevolent facilitators.  Win-win.

             As the sharing economy gains steam, these kinds of shared farming relationships are a natural progression.  It starts with sharing a cordless screwdriver and morphs into sharing a piece of property.  Oh if it were only that easy.

             You see, although I hear this yearning story every day, I also hear the heartbreak stories of older people who got abused by their young partners and young partners who got abused by their older equity partners.  Abuse seems to have no bounds.  And while it sounds nice to have a contract, as my blog friend suggested, like a pre-nuptial agreement, have you ever heard of a marriage breakup that went smooth because of its prenuptial agreement?

             The reason is that as soon as we sign the agreement, things change.  Tax laws change, regulations change, people die, get married, have kids, see a new opportunity, get burned out on the old opportunity.  I'm not opposed to contracts and agreements, but in the end, the glue that holds things together is trust.  And trust takes a long time to build.  You can't short cut trust.  And when trust evaporates, nothing looks like it did.

             The young people who want to jump into a farming opportunity with an older wealthier person want a marriage without courtship.  Ditto the desperate older person who looks at their life clock ticking away as justification for jumping into a relationship with a young partner.  My daughter-in-law Sheri manages a website called <www.eagerfarmer.com> that offers a matchmaking service for these very kinds of relationships.

             She's had some misses and some real solid hits.  This service grew out of our frustration at trying to do some matchmaking over the years and having virtually all of them turn negative.  Unmet expectations from both sides eventually develop into frustration and then outright hostility.  Because both parties come from a needy mentality, it's extremely hard to form a mutually beneficial arrangement.  But Sheri has created a template, using our experience, to try to force both parties to vocalize their expectations in order to minimize failure.

             The consternation in all this is that as I look around at the need, I agree it is unprecedented.  We have young people desperately wanting to launch.  Their weakness is they generally don't have a clue what it takes to actually pull off a launch--they want to farm on 40 hour weeks and 2 weeks of vacation and take maternity leave.  Teresa and I didn't leave the farm for 5 years when we started; I worked sunup to sundown; we had two kids and never took time off and nobody covered for us.  The entitlement mentality of today's millenials is astounding.

             Equally problematic are the assumptions of the older wealthy who have been successful in urban business or corporate structures but have no clue about capitalization, biology, and seasonality on the farm.  I've looked over many business plans created by these folks and they're laughable. 

             When I see how much money is pouring into the coming presidential election (Bernie just reported almost $100 million for the year) I realize once again that we have no problems going begging for lack of money.  The same thing is true for beginning farmers.  Or the price of good food.  Or buying better food.  Money is in the system; what are we spending it on?

             Rather than giving money to a political campaign, have you thought about buying authentic food from a real farmer?