Opinion: No shortage of young people keen to get into farming
© Gary Naylor Maybe I’m a heretic, but I’m a bit fed up with clichés about young people not wanting to farm.
I’m sure we’ve all been battered with statistics, and told many times that the average farmer is 59, and that 40% are past retirement age.
And I am sure we all know certain “traditionalists” who are keeping up the public stereotype, often free of serious debts, largely dependent on the subsidy cheque, who just keep plodding along.
But please do not tell me that they are there because young people do not want to farm.
About the author
See also: Farmers reveal best advice for starting out in agriculture
I’ve taught part time at agricultural colleges in the past, and farming courses are very popular.
This is not “ag-lite” mixed with business studies, food production, estate management and a hundred other permutations.
It’s just straight agriculture, and young people want to do it. If you don’t believe that, try applying for a county council farm tenancy.
For those in line to inherit a farm, succession is also a recurring theme.
Proper succession planning gives the hardworking and intelligent the motivation to keep going with the menial tasks, because one day they will be in control.
For the less-fortunate majority, however, the missing incentive to keep working with little recognition and no prospect of owning the business may drive them towards other occupations, and create the myth that “nobody wants to farm”.
With a limited number of farms available, the more imaginative have to look for other opportunities and, if tenancies are rare, true share-farming opportunities are rarer.
Once, on a student visit to the Houses of Parliament, one of my undergraduates came up with the idea of resurrecting the old “War Ag” committees.
This was so that people like him could be put on a farm because (in his opinion) they would obviously be so much better at it than members of the traditional faction mentioned above.
We’re going to need their help to get our industry standing on its stumps after its legs have been cut off by our greenwashing, free-market-fixated government
Fortunately, we managed to shut him up before he met the minister, but it does at least show lateral thought, as well as a certain amount of desperation – and he had turned his back on a chemistry degree to study agriculture.
You could well ask by what right this individual should be given the assets necessary for his own farming business while still wet behind the ears, just because he wants to do it.
That is not the point. All around you, in the countryside and in your local towns as well, are people who are experienced, interested and, in many cases, qualified to work our farms.
Some may be managing other people’s businesses, milking cows or driving tractors. Others may be saving up by working in completely unrelated occupations.
But, believe it or not, they are there, and we’re going to need their help to get our industry standing on its stumps after its legs have been cut off by our greenwashing, free-market-fixated government.
So, next time the morning routine gets a bit wearing, when the joints ache and long evenings spent in the tractor or combine make you wish for a bit of help to take the strain, remember there are plenty who would kill for a chance to run their own farming enterprise.
You could even consider an alternative business model that might let one of them in.