FARMING AND THE NEXT GENERATION

The younger people interviewed, being still involved in farming, represented those with a certain degree of engagement in agriculture. One indication of how young people more broadly are responding to changes in the sector is their participation in agricultural training. We interviewed a principal of a well-established agricultural college who explained that enrolments in agriculture courses were falling year on year, and that the college’s response to this had been to diversify into a broader range of “‘countryside leisure pursuits”, including, equine studies, game-keeping and wildlife management, fish farming, horticulture, automobile engineering, forestry, and the animal care industry.

Both older and younger farmers made the point that farmers’ anti-social working hours were off-putting to younger people, who were bound to have other priorities at this point in their life. Likewise, the income that a young farmer could expect to achieve compared unfavourably with their peers, who lacked responsibilities and were enjoying relatively high disposable incomes. One key informant gave the example of a friend’s son who worked in a box factory, work which he found dull, but for which “he earns far more than he ever could in farming,” an outcome that was unsatisfactory to both father and son.

One effect of young people’s disengagement in farming has been to increase labour pressures upon the remaining farmers. Derek Morris, a Devon dairy farmer, explained:

“we’re having a real problem trying to find someone to do the work and come into farming. I couldn’t sack a cowman if I wanted to because there’s nobody there that would take his place, so that’s a big change.”

A community worker in a stress-based organisation explained that young people were increasingly rejecting what they regarded as their fathers’ subservient positions in family farms, and were moving away from farming. This was a difficult perspective in the sense that it often conflicted with parents’ expectations for the future, and created worries in terms of succession and housing issues.

Adrian Hills, a Devon livestock farmer, explained that changes in the nature of farming meant that it had become more difficult for young people to establish themselves in farming than it had been for their parents, and that this acted as a disincentive to an agricultural career.

An important issue for policy, raised by many of those interviewed, is that within farming families there was often an unspoken (or sometimes more explicit assumption) that children would work on the farm and eventually move into farming themselves. While the current economic context of farming was increasingly prompting older farmers to encourage their children to take a broader labour market perspective, it remains true that a number of younger people would have benefited from more targeted careers advice about their options at this stage. Larry Black, who had regretted the choices he had made about farming, explained about how the education system had been complicit in reinforcing his parents’ desires:

“if you were a farmer’s son … you were more or less expected to come home and work on the farm, or at least get into the farming community, you weren’t really given the option. I remember going to … a careers interview … [they] looked down at your notes: “Oh your Dad’s a farmer isn’t it? So you’ll be going on your Mum and Dad’s farm, won’t you?””

One key informant commented that the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (NFYFC) had played a valuable role in combating rural isolation, but that since FMD many local branches had been forced to close, depriving young people of vital social networks and support from other young farmers. The same informant noted that the NFYFC had a secondary, equally important educative role, and that farming as a whole was likely to suffer unless the trend was reversed. Rural isolation was particularly acute in certain areas. Rhys Lloyd, a young farmer from Powys, commented that:

“Where there would’ve been lots of farmers, young farmers in this valley there’s only myself, I’m the youngest for miles away really.”

By contrast, a growing movement towards agricultural training and credentialisation amongst those remaining in the industry, has led to a position in some areas where a relatively small group of younger farmers with highly developed business skills have performed well in the agricultural sector, finding their skills well matched to current market demands.

Farming then, has seen a fundamental shake-up over recent decades, a process that has important implications for both occupational satisfaction and workplace stress.

4.10 SUMMARY

Recent years have seen major organisational and policy changes in the agricultural sector, which have transformed the character of the work performed by farming communities. These have included:

• Changes in the sizes of farms, with smaller family-run farms finding it increasingly difficult to compete, and farms overall tending to grow in order to position themselves as more adaptable. One off-shoot of this has been that the landscape of agriculture has changed, in terms of the appearance of farms, the population of the countryside, and the availability of local facilities.

• An intensification of farming practices in response to falling returns for agricultural produce in a global market, and with this a reduced sense of control over the work of farming.

• Farmers reassessing the ways in which they farm as certain types of farming have become less profitable. Managed changes have tended to be more successful and stable over the long-term than more responsive ones. However, these were often associated with a business perspective, which sometimes represented an uncomfortable culture shift for farmers.

• High-profile stock crises with acute regional effects and longer-term impacts upon the stability of livestock farming.

• An increase in diversification activities as, for many, farming has become a less reliable source of income.

• A fall in the use and availability of farm labour, leading to alternative strategies including the use of migrant and contractual labour, informal and more formal systems of labour exchange between farms, an intensification of farms’ workloads, and some farmers leaving agriculture altogether.

• A heightened administrative burden upon farmers, prompted by increased regulation and an expansion of subsidy payment systems.

• Young people increasingly being deterred from following their parents into farming by perceptions that it has become much more difficult to make a living. As a consequence, the pressures resting upon remaining farming communities in terms of workload, succession issues and housing have become more intense.