Meet three Arizona millennial farmers keeping the industry alive

The median age of a farmer in Arizona is somewhere between 55 and 64 years old. This is a nationwide trend as farmers get older and fewer young people go into the profession. Three millennial farmers are taking up the reins in the local agriculture industry. In a rural part of Arizona on the way to Yarnell, two cowboys try to get a stubborn cow to get up and move out of a narrow wooden chute. She’s lying down because she can’t turn around. She’s one of a dozen or so cows rounded up by Ty Sorrells. Sorrells goes out into rough country on horseback to round up stray or feral cows wandering around. Livestock Officer Garrett Lacey takes a look at these found near Lake Pleasant. Those cows will be auctioned off by a ranch — so Lacey needs to inspect them before that — he writes down how many bulls and heifers are in the bunch. “The auction requires us to make sure that Ty didn’t steal these cows," Lacey said. That’s where the livestock officer comes in. Lacey’s paperwork, that Sorrells signs on the officer’s iPad, is proof. “At the sale barn they’re going to ask Ty for his paperwork so that paperwork is going to match the load that they’re coming in," Lacey said. Lacey is in his early 20s, and one of the younger livestock officers in the Arizona Department of Agriculture. His job is to inspect livestock before they’re slaughtered or moved around. He travels hundreds of miles for his job — he listens to podcasts in his truck to pass the time. To him, being a millennial in agriculture means using technology to help things along — like having people send self-inspection paperwork to his phone instead of making a trip for one or two head of cattle. “It’s super nice where, where I can just — text me or email and I’ll email it, I’ll send a screenshot, and it’s gone," Lacey said. And he’s all over cowboy social media, where people show off their roping catches — legal or not. Lacey monitors Snapchat or YouTube for any kind of illicit cowboy activity, but says most of the time, it isn’t easy to determine where videos were filmed, or if it was technically illegal or not...MORE