Back to the land
Quand les Millennials quittent la ville.
Passer de la chaise de bureau à la cabine de tracteur et troquer le costume pour la combinaison et les bottes, les « Millennials » sont de plus en plus nombreux à le faire. Depuis une dizaine d’années, ces jeunes actifs nés entre 1980 et 2000 semblent particulièrement enclins, notamment aux États-Unis, à quitter leur vie citadine au profit de la vie agricole. Un retour à la nature qui n’est pas sans rappeler celui des années 1970...
Eight years ago, Liz Whitehurst, then 25, was working in digital communications at a policy organization in Washington DC and dreaming of life outside a cubicle. She started exploring a different kind of existence by volunteering on local farms. When the farmer who provided the locally sourced vegetable box she signed up for invited her to work the fields one day, she was starstruck. “You’re my hero,” she recalls telling the farmer. “I want your life.” 2. Today, she has it. Whitehurst grows a wide array of produce on Owl’s Nest Farm, set on a few acres in Upper Marlboro, Maryland (she bought it from that same farmer). Whitehurst grows sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash – everything is handpicked. She also provides greens to a local pizza kitchen which was recently named one of the best new restaurants in the country. She runs the farm with two other millennials: Foster Gettys, 29, who lives on the property with half a dozen chickens as pets, and Sara Policastro, 23, who manages the farm’s small rotation of volunteers.
3. Whitehurst likes the autonomy. She likes being outside. She likes having visible proof of her efforts at the end of the day. “You can see the thing you accomplished – you weeded the bed,” she says. “And in an office it’s like, ‘Oh I sent all those emails.’”
DRAWBACKS 4. At 33, her life amid the dinosaur kale and pink beauty radishes would strike many as admirable, even romantic. And she’s grateful for the farm’s convenient location 30 minutes outside Washington DC, where people will pay a premium for the fresh, locally sourced greens she sells. But there’s a catch: she works longer hours than she ever did at her office jobs in Washington – for thousands a year less. When she goes into the city to sell on weekends, she’s often too tired to do much socializing.
5. Still, she’s one of the fortunate: she was able to lease the land in the first place and buy out her co-founders because her family was in a position to lend her the money. For others wanting to follow her footsteps, access to a life unplugged is even more difficult.
‘IT IS A PIPE DREAM AROUND HERE’ 6. While Americans spending most waking hours on screens, Whitehurst is part of a small but growing movement of young people seeking out a more agrarian life. While the number of farmers aged 35-54 dropped from 2007 to 2012, there was an increase in millennial farmers by 2.2%, according to census data. The young people coming into the profession are fueled by idealism but, like the hippie generation before them, and the many traditional farmers who have been driven out of the industry by its brutal economics, the reality of life on the land isn’t as simple as they had hoped.
7. Farming requires a lot of immediate capital without offering any immediate way to repay it, and the statistics for new farmers are grim. More than half of US farm households report losses from their farm businesses each year. Net profits have been falling for years, with cash income cut almost in half since 2013. Young farmers also face high student debt burdens and land prices unheard of a generation or two ago. The average cost of farm real estate rose 47% from 2009 to 2017, according to government data.
8. That hasn’t dissuaded 26-year-old Bronte Edwards, who is pursuing an associate’s degree in agriculture at Santa Rosa junior college in northern California. She hopes to start a farm of her own one day and capitalize on the prevalence of farm-to-table restaurants and a culture among affluent urbanites where fresh, local ingredients are chic. The only trouble is, she can’t afford to get started. “It is a pipe dream around here,” says Edwards of buying land in Santa Rosa, 25 miles outside tony Napa Valley wine country, where land is prohibitively expensive. She knows it won’t be easy, but Edwards isn’t easily discouraged. “I’m a masochist,” she jokes.
1970S-ERA LEGACIES 9. At the dawn of the 1970s, amid growing consciousness of environmental degradation and unrest over the war in Vietnam, young people were feeling the urge to get back to the land – a kind of lived protest. They organized themselves in loose collectives, started organic farms, experimented with communal gardens and tried out alternative living arrangements in defiance of monogamy’s restrictions. But these new ways of living presented their own challenges and in the years that followed, many would revert to more conventional lifestyles.
10. Back-to-the-landers (of whom Bernie Sanders was one) were dismissed, as millennial farmers today may be, as unrealistic dreamers (Hillary Clinton, long before her presidential matchup with Sanders, dismissed the movement as “mental masturbation”: an interesting exercise in philosophy, perhaps, but no way to live in the world). Even Henry David Thoreau, whose book Walden helped inspire future generations to live closer to nature, failed at self-reliance in many ways, and has been derided for accepting homecooked meals from his mother and entertaining visitors, since his little cabin at the pond was actually quite close to a busy railroad. Similar things haunted the young idealists I spoke with.
11. It doesn’t work for everyone, or perhaps, for most. But 1970s-era experiments shouldn’t be completely written off, as their positive legacies abound, including an enthusiasm for fresh and organic foods, a thriving artisanal market and a growing commitment to clean energy.