Aging farmers, lack of succession plans put future of family farms at risk
Bryan Maynard says his grandfather, a Prince Edward Island potato farmer, didn’t start talking about retirement until he was 80 years old and had been diagnosed with dementia.
At that point, with no succession strategy in place, Maynard and his brother suddenly had to scramble to find a way to keep the farm in the family and just barely managed to do so.
The 33-year-old’s situation is not uncommon. A growing number of farmers are nearing retirement without having formally planned for their successors, putting the next generation of small-scale farming at risk — something Maynard and advocates are urging farming families to think about.
“Our grandfather didn’t really want to talk about selling the farm, ever, until it was too late and he had to,” Maynard said.