America's aging farmers often don't have a family member to take over the family farm

As farmland changes hands, there will be far fewer family
farms in the U.S. (Photo by Johny Goerend, Unsplash)

Whether it's the unpredictable income, politics or little love for manual labor, many children of today's aging American farmers don't want to run the family farm. "There are more farmers 75 and older than under the age of 35. They are facing tough choices," reports Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal. "Thousands across the U.S. are closing the book on farms that have been in their families for generations."

In today's farming economy, many farmers depend on federal bailouts, and even with that support, some still won't turn a profit. As a result, many farming families are selling their lands or claiming bankruptcy. 

Don Guinnip, a fifth-generation corn and soybearn farmer in Marshall, Illinois, doesn't think the future of family farms and their surrounding communities will be "pretty," Thomas writes. He told Thomas, "When farmers owned the land and lived on the land, they took care of the land and they formed communities that worked together and solved problems and took care of everybody. You’re not going to have that in the future.”

Like many children of farming families, Guinnip's children left the farm to attend college and move to bigger cities for professional careers. Thomas explains, "Children of farmers today have more opportunities to work beyond agriculture than they did decades ago, and families are typically smaller, shrinking the pool of possible candidates."

Seventy-four-year-old Guinnip thinks "he can maintain the current workload for a couple more years," Thomas writes. "He contemplates a day when a Guinnip no longer cares for the land that runs along Guinnip Road."

What will it take to pass a new federal Farm Bill? The last one was approved in 2018.

A new Farm Bill will have to work around political
flashpoints. (Graphic by Adam Dixon, Offrange)

The last Farm Bill was passed by Congress in 2018, but political divisions over Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding and farm subsidies have prevented lawmakers from agreeing on a new Farm Bill, leaving sectors that depend on the massive omnibus package relying on extensions for authorized funding, reports Clare Carlson for Offrange. Farm policy experts say any new Farm Bill will have to navigate around conflicts to address an evolving set of farming and rural needs.

Mike Lavender, a policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, told Carlson that as the number of U.S. farms has shrunk, and the size of the remaining farms has grown, what farmers need in a Farm Bill has changed.

As politicians continue to battle over SNAP and subsidies, those two entities only "make up two of the Farm Bill’s 12 titles, which include research, conservation, forestry, and rural development," Carlson reports. "The programs under those other 10 titles are what get neglected, Lavender said, hurting farmers and rural communities in the process."

With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, SNAP funding was separated from the Farm Bill and "wrapped into budget reconciliation bills," Carlson explains. OBBA cut SNAP’s budget by 20% while "doubling funding to subsidy programs for commodities like soybeans, wheat, and corn."

Michael Happ, a program associate at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told Offrange, “We might be living in a post-Farm Bill world right now where we just pass farm policy through budget bills and we leave out a lot of really important research and programs that help farmers."

Meanwhile, House Agriculture Chair Glenn Thompson "pledged to complete a five-year farm bill in committee by the end of February, as lawmakers try to bridge political divides that have stalled the legislation," reports Marc Heller of E&E News. "Thompson (R-Pa.) told state agriculture officials that finishing the bill. . . is his top priority."

Carlson adds, "Without a Farm Bill, food and agricultural policy could be left to the whims of whichever party controls the White House. . . . Planning for the future is also a lot harder for farmers without a Farm Bill."

Neighbors in Maine volunteer to build window inserts for each other to fight the winter cold

Students in Vermont build a WindowDresser insert. 
(Photo by Andrew McKeever, The Yonder )

Harsh winters in Maine can make it hard to keep the cold air outside from creeping into the older New England style homes. WindowDressers is a community-based heating solution that keeps warm air inside by inserting an insulated wooden window into a home or commercial window frame, Andrew McKeever reports for The Daily Yonder.

The concept started in a church in Rockland, Maine, which was losing heat due to its leaky aluminum-clad windows. Church member Richard Cadwgan decided to build window inserts for the church windows, which he learned about at a Midcoast Green Collaborative conference, a Maine-based nonprofit organization. Cadwgan told McKeever the window inserts were a “win-win-win – lower heating bills, fewer carbon emissions, and greater comfort in the cold winter months.”

After word spread to other community members, Cadwgan and former congregation president Frank Munro took orders for 185 inserts for homes the next year, and 1,231 inserts the year after. With so many orders, more volunteers were needed, so “community builds” were formed. Now, there are 52 community builds throughout Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Community builds allow for volunteers with no prior carpentry experience to help build the window inserts after just a brief instruction from their team leader, McKeever explains. Jim Salsgiver, one of the original organizers, told McKeever, “I love the builds and getting together, meeting new people. What’s so cool is somebody comes in and says, ‘Okay, well I signed up, but what do I do?’ And, you know, after three hours, they’re acting like pros doing it and excited about it and telling their friends.”

As of 2024, at least 78,600 inserts have been made, saving almost 4 million gallons of heating fuel.

Wyoming officials aim to keep the state's Rural Health Transformation Program award going in 'perpetuity'

Wyoming is the most sparsely populated state in
the U.S. (Photo by Karsten Koehn, Unsplash)

As Wyoming's rural hospitals struggle to make ends meet and hire enough medical providers, state officials have hatched a plan using money from its Rural Health Transformation Program funds to buffer losses, create more robust provider training and incentives, while using investments to help the money stretch for decades, reports Arial Zionts of KFF Health News.

If Wyoming's plan receives federal approval to invest a substantial portion of its $205 million award, the state's "Rural Health Transformation Perpetuity fund could provide $28.5 million for the state to spend every year," Zionts explains. "Wyoming would spend the money on scholarships for health students and incentive payments to help keep small hospitals and rural ambulance services afloat."

The federal RHTP program requires states to spend their awards by established deadlines, or the money will be shelled out to other states. The question is, will the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which manages RHTP, see placing the money in an investment account as "spending it."

Stefan Johansson, the director of Wyoming’s health department, thinks it will. "He said that CMS called in December to specifically ask questions about the fund and that he believes the agency has formally approved it," Zionts reports. "But 'the devil’s always in the details,' he said, as the state works with CMS during the budget review period."

CMA has already told some states that RHTP grants "cannot be used to 'generate income.'" Zionts adds. "Wyoming officials wrote in the state’s application that the perpetuity fund won’t be making or keeping any profit. . . .Other states proposed funds in their applications, but Wyoming’s appears unique, according to a KFF Health News review of state applications."

This robot helps rural seniors stay healthier and allows them to live independently longer

ElliQ is designed to be a companion and helper.
(Intuition Robotics photo)

In more remote parts of the country, residents can go for days without seeing another human. But as people age, going without human connection can be lonely and potentially dangerous. For some rural seniors living in isolation in Washington state, participating in a pilot program that pairs them with a robot companion offers a potential solution, reports Eli Saslow of The New York Times.

Jan Worrell, 85, is participating in the pilot so she can continue living alone in her home, which sits on an isolated strip of the Long Island Peninsula. Firefighters came to Worrell's home and installed her new robot partner: "ElliQ."

One of ElliQ's initial greetings to Worrell sounded like a new friend's introduction. Saslow writes, "'Oh, I’m so thrilled to meet you,' ElliQ said. 'I was worried they’d deliver me to the wrong house! I’m excited to start our journey together.'"

"A few thousand ElliQs have been shipped to seniors across the United States since 2023. . . . by nonprofits and state health departments as an experiment in combating loneliness," Saslow reports. "ElliQ is designed for the most human act of all: to become a roommate, a friend, a partner."

Initially, Worrell didn't want help or company at home. "That’s what she told her relatives whenever they gently suggested that maybe it was time to move into a care center, or closer to family," Saslow adds. "But despite her strength and stubborn independence, her doctors had warned that living alone sometimes came at a cost." Loneliness can be deadlier than many chronic diseases.

Now, ElliQ keeps Worrell company by providing conversation, medication reminders, playing music and asking questions. Saslow writes, "It has been designed to read a room, calculate moods and then decide when to speak and what to say."