Idaho is losing a farm a day. Farmers are aging. How will we feed a growing population?
BOISE, Idaho — Matt Wissel grows vegetables and melons on about 80 acres in Nampa, just as his father and grandfather did. He runs his family’s farm, Wissel Farms, with his wife, Benita.
He’s watched as acre after acre of farmland has given way to houses. If residential developments and big-box stores keep taking over farmland in Canyon County, Wissel says, there won’t be much agriculture left.
The average price of seven Nampa farmland-only properties listed for sale at the start of August on landsearch.com topped $63,000 per acre. But Wissel says that even in rural Parma, farmland that’s not geared for development sells for about $11,000 an acre, too pricey for farming.
“There’s no way you could pay for that by growing any kind of commodity,” he said.
Wissel, at 66, is one of Idaho’s dwindling ranks of farmers, their average ages ever rising, still helping to feed the world while an increasing population puts pressure on them to sell out to developers for soaring amounts of money.
One-fourth of farmland lost
In the last 40 years, Idaho lost nearly a quarter of its farmland. Millions of acres, once filled by crops or livestock, were sold and developed into shops and suburban neighborhoods.
At its peak in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, there were more than 15 million acres of farmed land and about 30,000 farms in Idaho.
Now there are about 11.5 million acres and less than 23,000 farms, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. They cover 22% of Idaho land — the state has about 53 million acres in total.
“We’re forced to do a little more with less,” Ben Johnson, Idaho state statistician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, said at a webinar on the latest data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture. “We’re still expected to feed a growing population but with less farms and less farmland to do it on.”
The state lost 2,119 farms, or 8.5% of its total, between 2017 and 2022, the latest year for which data is available. That adds up to more than one farm lost per day.
Most neighboring states, including Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Washington, lost farmland to an even greater degree than Idaho between 2017 and 2022. Only Oregon and Utah lost fewer farms than Idaho.
The average farm in Idaho covers 505 acres. About 2,500 of the farms have more than 1,000 acres.
Land with ‘beautiful views’
The Wissels’ farm has been around since 1911, when Matt Wissel’s grandfather bought 100 acres northeast of Lake Lowell. The farm saw success, going on to sell its produce at a farmstand off Lake Lowell Avenue and at WinCo and Albertsons supermarkets.
But at some point, his father and uncle decided to sell the land. Much of it was developed into homes. Some became a golf course. Wissel carried on farming, leasing nearby bits of land from a longtime friend and former farmer.
Wissel said he doesn’t understand why some farmers sell their land.
“I guess it comes down to whether you have a short-term perspective or a long-term perspective,” he said. “If your perspective is, how much cash I can get in the next two or three years, that makes sense. But if you look at it over a 100- or 200-year period, then it doesn’t really make sense for farm families to sell their land.”
Wissel grows corn used to make corn flour — what he calls taco corn — on a prime piece of real estate between the lake and the aforementioned golf course.
“Obviously, the views here are beautiful,” he told the Idaho Statesman. “Any developer would love to have this view of Lake Lowell.”
But he says he and his landlord are committed to farming the land. Last year, he spent about $100,000 on a new pivot irrigation system to water the crops. He also farms sweet corn, pumpkins, melons, tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, kale, cilantro, winter squash and more at another field not far away.
Then: crops. Now: pricey homes
On a hot July day, Wissel parked his old pickup along a dirt road that separates his corn field and the RedHawk Golf Course at 12225 S. Hunters Drive. A few feet away, on the other side of a wire fence, residents of the homes overlooking the green jogged by on an asphalt walking path.
Wissel offered hellos and good mornings. He chatted with one couple walking their dog.
Over the years, he said, he’s seen the property transform from vegetable fields into high-priced homes for California transplants. The current market value of one of the houses, built in 2022, is $930,000, according to a Redfin estimate.
“The thing they like about living here is the view,” he said. “They like the fact that we farm here, and then they get to see the fields. So it seems like not a wise choice to just constantly make the developments tighter and tighter. We could do something where we still have some farms and some development.”
For now, the property he farms near the lake in Nampa will remain so. Wissel said his landlord is “adamant” that the land not be developed.
“So that’s our plan,” he said. “We’re going to continue to farm it as long as we’re here.”
Ada County’s loss is great
Much of Idaho’s farm loss over the last few decades has been in the Treasure Valley, especially in Ada County, the home of Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Kuna, Garden City and Star.
Jan Roeser, an economist at the Idaho Department of Labor, said during the webinar that Meridian was once a big producer of dairy. Now, it’s a big producer of subdivisions. Roeser herself grew up on a small farm in southern Idaho.
Ada County, which had over 430,000 acres of farmland at its peak in 1945, now has just one-fourth that much, about 110,000 acres. Canyon County, the home of Nampa, Caldwell, Middleton, Parma, Greenleaf, Melba and Notus, remains far more agricultural, but it has lost a third of the more than 390,000 acres of farmland it had in 1992. It has just shy of 280,000 acres now.
Those statistics cover all operated farmland, including leased and owned land. Johnson, the federal statistician, said that many farmers lease land, often to other family members as they retire.
“It’s not good to see falling farm numbers,” Johnson said.
Ada County lost over 13% of the farms it still had in 2017 by 2022. It has 1,142 farms left. Canyon County has the most farms in Idaho (Twin Falls County ranked second, followed by Ada County) at 2,311, up from 2,289 in 2017 but down overall from 2007.
Roeser said the recent increase in the number of Canyon County farms could be because of a growing number of small farms operated by hobby farmers — people who enjoy farming but make their primary living doing something else.
The decrease in Ada County shows some evidence of consolidation, which is when large farms acquire land from smaller ones. As the number of farms went down, the average farm size went up. The average farm in Ada County covers 99 acres, up from 86 acres in 2017.
And the food supply?
Farms are an integral part of Idaho’s economy. And though farming is hard work, for most farmers the pay is modest. The average income per farm in Idaho in 2022 was $42,336 a year.
Roeser said that if the state loses its farmers and farmland too quickly, it could spur price increases at the grocery store.
She said the state’s No. 1 agricultural export is dairy, followed by potatoes. The state also produces a significant amount of hay, wheat, sugar beets and corn. Much of the corn is used in cattle feed.
“Everybody knows Idaho for its spuds,” Roeser said. “There’s a huge supply chain that feeds into it. We don’t produce food in Idaho just to feed us. A lot of our exports go out the door.”
Johnson said that keeping production up is an ongoing challenge.
He said that while many farmers are struggling financially, they’re getting more innovative with the land they have, whether that’s finding improved ways to get rid of pests, conserving water or utilizing drones. He noted that agritourism has increased in the last five years.
“There’s some hard things to take away from this data, but there’s some good things, too,” Johnson said.
Migrant workers fill gap
Idaho farms employ an estimated 44,000 hired workers, 21,000 unpaid workers and 5,000 migrant workers.
Roeser said the migrant category includes farm laborers imported through the federal H-2A visa program, which allows foreigners to temporarily work in the U.S. Agriculture jobs can be hard to fill, and migrant workers serve an important role in filling that gap. But migrant workers in the H-2A visa program are required to work seasonal jobs and therefore don’t qualify to work some agricultural jobs, like those at Idaho’s dairies.
“We know that there are certain workers that are working under the radar and are not documented to work in the U.S.,” Roeser said. “It’s believed that a lot of them migrate to the dairy industry, because they need so many workers. Everybody goes to great lengths to try to ensure that doesn’t happen, but it’s really hard.”
The unpaid category includes family members of farmers, mainly farmers’ children, she said.
Average farmer’s age going up
The average age of Idaho farmers has been slowly creeping up for decades.
More than a third of farmers in the state are over age 65. In 2022, the average farmer was 56.6 years old, up slightly from 56.4 in 2017. The average age was 55.8 in 2002. It was 50.6 in 1982.
Idaho farmers also tend to be experienced, with an average of about 22 years farming, according to the census data.
Nationwide, farmers are the oldest workforce, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging. A report the committee published in October 2023 said that many farmers are nearing retirement, and younger generations aren’t following in their footsteps.
The report said that to meet rising food demand over the next few decades, the industry must attract and retain more farmers, increase agricultural innovation and streamline regulations.
“It’s not something you just pop into,” Roeser said. “Part of farming is financing all of the equipment, and you have to have the land. They almost have to have it in their family to make it worthwhile. But I think a lot of farmers have found that the next generation has other ideas about how they want to spend their working days.”
No plans to stop
Wissel, while just past the nation’s traditional retirement age of 65, said he has no plans to retire.
“I don’t,” he said. “There’s two ways I answer that — No. 1, I don’t feel like I’ve ever had a job. I’ve spent 50 years just kind of getting up and running my own show. The other problem is that there’s really nothing in retirement that appeals to me.”
What happens if he becomes weary? Or physically unfit?
Last spring, a tractor tire fell on Wissel’s ankle. He continued walking on it for two weeks, telling his wife and daughters that he thought he only sprained it. Finally, his wife took him to Saint Alphonsus in Boise for an X-ray. He left in a wheelchair.
“They wouldn’t even let me walk out of there,” he said.
After surgery, where his doctor installed a metal plate, Wissel spent nearly seven weeks getting around with the help of a peg-leg mobility scooter.
“It slowed me down a little bit,” he admitted.
He said he could see a future where his daughters, son-in-laws and their children continue the family farm in some way.
Wissel, who has no sons, said his three daughters are active with helping out where they can. But they also all have careers in other places, he said. One is a doctor in Portland. Another, his youngest, helps with the farm’s social media presence even though she lives in New Jersey.
“I always tell the kids I’m going to retire at 90,” he said.