Down on the farm – Ruralpolitan Baby Boomers may be a long-term bust
As marketers from a number of agriculture-related industries have been aware for several years, not all baby-boomers are moving their empty nests to the beach, golf community or urban downtown. A noticeable number are embracing the “ruralpolitan” lifestyle and moving to the country.
According to Farm Industry News, ruralpolitans are “a fast-growing group of farmers with either single or double incomes derived off the farm. This group represents a whopping 47% of all U.S. farm households. A typical double-income ruralpolitan earns an income of about $85,000 a year but posts about a $3,000 loss on the farm.”
From the perspective of ag-related marketers, a big increase in the number of wealthy, high income, non-bottom line focused farmers must seem like a morphing of Green Acres and The Twilight Zone…but in a good way. A closer look at the numbers suggests that there may be generational plot device at work, with the Baby Boomer generation playing the rural-loving Oliver Douglas while Generations X & Y seem more likely to embrace Lisa Douglas’ Park Avenue point of view.
Setting aside the Green Acres cultural impact for a moment, it would seem reasonable that having some background or exposure to rural life is positively influential if not predictive of adults looking to live, but not work in the country. If that is true, then Generations X & Y will likely be heading back to the country in much smaller numbers a generation from now.
Statistically speaking, Baby Boomers were 7 times more likely to be exposed to life on a farm than their Gen Y counterparts. A Lafayette Associates analysis of US Census data shows that while more than 1 in 3 Baby Boomers born in 1950 were born into a rural farm family or had grandparents on a farm, for a Generation X’er born in 1970 that ratio had grown to nearly 1 in 7. For a Gen Y’er born in 1990 that ratio had grown to more than 1 in 21, seven times what it was for Baby Boomers.
Absent stronger research about consumer preferences for choosing a ruralpolitan lifestyle, the many middle-market companies that serve agricultural sectors will need to be highly circumspect about future growth forecasts. For today’s ag-marketers, these ruralpolitan Baby Boomers are indeed booming. But like so many other markets that have remade themselves to suite Baby Boomers’ tastes, the Boomers inevitably move on, and growth falls with a thud. Given the significant differences in exposure to rural life between these three generational groups, for today’s ag-marketers, the “post-Boomer thud” may be louder and come quicker than most. Meanwhile, “make hay while the sun shines.”
Add comment October 29th, 2006
