Excerpts from the report Conclusion: Information presented in this paper does not support the notion that farm operators are getting older than self-employed people in other occupations. If anything, farmers in the expanding sector of our farm economy tend to be somewhat younger than other self- employed workers. Farmers in this group today account for more than four-fifths of total farm production. There are, however, a great number of small-scale farms on which we find an aging population of farmers. Despite the somewhat younger operators on the larger farms, it is true that on the whole, we are getting an agricultural population of older farmers. But it should be emphasized that, while this represents a very real human problem for a large number of small-scale late middle-aged and older farmers, it does not pose any significant problem to the commercial farming industry as such.