By JAMIE SEARS RAWLINGS

Kentucky Correspondent

SPENCER, Ind. — As co-owner of Horse-Angels, Inc. – a not-for-profit, no-kill horse farm in Spencer — Bill Whitman has much to do.

“When we are making hay, I have to go out and mow 50 acres, then I have to go out day after tomorrow and rake and bale those acres,” he said one day recently. “When we need square bales, which we go through about 6,000 to 7,000 a year, I get to go out and re-bale the round bales to bring them into the barn.

“We have 30-something horses inside the barn that get fed twice a day. The other horses are outside the building, and we do make sure that we lay eyes on all animals, even the cows, every day.”

He and his wife Sue, the farm’s veterinarian and co-owner, take in and care for horses in all conditions, which is often an added responsibility for the pair. “Because of the nature of the types of horses that we take in, we wind up with health issues frequently,” Whitman explained.

“Nothing ever happens normally on a farm. It requires us to be efficient.”

At 60, he is among the many farmers, producers, and ranchers who are getting older. In fact, according to the USDA’s last Census of Agriculture data, more than 31 percent of principal farm operators were age 65 and older. The average age of principal operators in 2012 was 58.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has developed a “susceptibility index” to measure which jobs are vulnerable to decline in skills as practitioners age. Matt Rutledge, associate professor of the practice at Boston College Economics Department and a research fellow in the Center for Retirement Research, said farm managers are in the top-third most susceptible to declining skills with age.

“Those results aren't very surprising, given the requirement for explosive strength and manual dexterity, both abilities that workers tend to start losing in their fifties and sixties,” he said.

“On the cognitive side, farmers can rely on their crystallized intelligence – that is, the knowledge they've built up on handling crops, animals, weather, labor relations, et cetera – but they might suffer to the extent that they need to use and acquire fluid cognitive abilities such as adaptive reasoning. For example, how do they deal with a new pesticide-resistant strain of insect, or handle new financial and information technology?

“This research suggests it's not just declining physical skills that might lead to relatively early retirement, but also declining ability to keep up with the cognitive strains of their field,” Rutledge said.

While more farmers, farm managers, growers, and ranchers are both reaching the age of retirement and experiencing a decline in the skills needed for their jobs, some are continuing to stay the course, for a variety of reasons. This includes Whitman, who said his farm is not just a job, but a livelihood, a passion, and a financial necessity.

“Fifteen years ago, we took everything we had financially and built this place,” he recalled. “It’s been pretty rocky. We did okay until the recession of 2008, and then we began to see that the whole economy was going to tank, so we knew that we had to do a far better job with our finances.

“I was 56 when I decided I needed to go back to school and get a business education in order just to exist and help build a foundation under this horse farm. I needed to know what we needed to do to survive.”

To stay competitive

Increasingly, others like him are coming to the same conclusion and seeking ways to further their knowledge or education in order to streamline, better manage, and help their farms endure in an increasingly competitive market. For Whitman, the answer came in the form of an online tract of learning available through Indiana Wesleyan University.

“Indiana Wesleyan was literally the only school I found that was comfortable for what I consider a farmer’s timetable,” he explained.

IWU officials are seeing more people like Whitman seeking out its online programs because of their versatility. “IWU-National & Global has a long history of offering college courses geared toward working adults,” said David Rose, its vice president for enrollment and marketing.

“We have more than 80 online and on-site degree programs, and we find that working adults like our flexible online programs because they have the option to log on whenever and wherever they like to do their class work.”

Whitman said his “whenever” is typically at night after all farm work is wrapped up. “I try to budget an hour-and-a-half to two hours every day to school,” he said. “That doesn’t always work, but, by and large, it has worked for me.

“The part that’s been fun is that I need the information, so when you’re learning something that you need, it makes it easier to give time to.”

He’s been juggling school and farm responsibilities at his own pace for five years. When he’s finished, Whitman hopes to graduate from IWU with a bachelor’s degree – a traditional college degree achieved through nontraditional means.

Officials at various land-grant universities say their schools also offer alternate paths for agriculturalists who need education. Caula Beyl, dean of the Herbert College of Agriculture at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, credits her school’s extension program for boosting education opportunities for nontraditional students.

“Most of the programs that the farming community do take advantage of are those offered by extension because these can be taken at a low cost, do not require extensive amounts of time away from the farm, and are often tailored specifically to the needs of the farmer,” she noted.

Despite that trend, Beyl said programs do exist through UTIA that would be beneficial to those in agriculture.

“Financial planning for increased profitability could be found in our Agricultural & Resource Economics Department, programs geared toward profitable livestock production can be found in our Animal Science Department, grain and forage crop production in our Plant Science Department – and the list goes on,” she added.

In her state, Beyl said adult learners are eligible for Tennessee Reconnect, a state-sponsored grant program that allows adults who do not already have an associate’s or bachelor’s degree to attend in-state community or technical colleges tuition-free. Tennessee is the first state in the nation to institute such a program.

Even IWU is constantly seeking new ways to reach an older audience. “At IWU-National & Global, we are reimagining the process we use to design new degree programs,” said Rose. “We just recently initiated a Strategic Program Launch team whose sole purpose is to release several new programs each year.

For Whitman, IWU even removed the barriers for entry, making it simple for him to get started. “I have discovered with IWU that they stand ready to help navigate the bureaucracies involved. There is nothing to stop anyone from furthering their education.”

In an industry that is growing and changing in leaps and bounds, Whitman knows adaptation is the key to survival. His farm is living proof: “Everywhere you look, they are forcing change that the average 63-year-old does not understand,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t mean he can’t understand it; it just means he’s never had the opportunity to gather that information.

“We have an advantage that I believe that older students need to remember,” he said. “What we have as older adults is experience, and we are far more powerful when we add our experience to that knowledge that we can obtain through education.”