By Anthony King
Most farm managers in Europe are nearing retirement. There is a need to revitalize rural areas in Europe and crate opportunities for younger people. Social scientists are scrutinizing the problem of rural decline, highlighting success stories and policy actions and tracking paths back to a more prosperous countryside.
Farming is an ancient profession. But a problem in Europe is that the farmers themselves are getting old. From the more than ten million farm managers, one-third were over the age of 65 in 2016. Another one-quarter were 55 and over, while only 11 percent were under 40 years of age.
It is clear that rural areas need to halt population declines and attract new generations. To turn back the tide and regenerate rural areas, social scientists are unearthing how and why some rural areas are growing and performing better than others.
This will reveal how farming can seed a new crop of young farmers, as well as encourage green shoots in rural communities, and transform them into more attractive places to live and work.
"Farmers are getting old and mostly male. About 13 percent of farmland is managed by female farmers," said Willem Korthals Altes, land development professor at TU Delft in the Netherlands. "There is also an issue of declining rural regions, and this all needs new policies."
Specifically, Professor Korthals Altes has examined the aspirations of young people in rural and urban areas in 12 different countries and looked at what actions could be taken to attract newcomers to the countryside as part of the four-year EU-wide RURALIZATION research project. Prof. Korthals Altes and his team have interviewed about 2,000 young people in 20 regions of the EU about their hopes for the future. One surprise was that many people, in cities and the countryside, would like to live in rural areas, often for quality-of-life reasons.
The project aims to identify paths to overcome population and economic decline in rural Europe and seed new opportunities. Right now, the picture painted by statistics is bleak. The EU lost 11 percent of its farmland between 1993 and 2013, while farms themselves are getting bigger and fewer, which contributes to job losses. "If we look at just the overall statistics, what we found is sad," said Prof. Korthals Altes. "So we looked for positive examples that we could learn from and also highlight positive practices."
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