The future of farming, and of farmers, is not as secure as we might expect. The odds are that the farmers who grew the food for your next meal have the majority of their careers behind them. In the UK, the average age of a farmer is 59. In Kenya, it is 60. And in Japan, with the hightest average age for a farmer, it is 67.
When this generation of experienced farmers retires, who will carry on putting food on the table after them? Young people are increasingly seeking work in the cities, marginalizing agriculture.
"The rhetoric is that we're not going to have farmers in 15 years because the older generation is gone and no one new is coming in. But i don't think that's accurate at all," syas Lee-Ann Sutherland, a researcer at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland.
There are two main reasons for that. The first is that the headline figures often conceal farms that do have successors clearly marked out. A farmer in their 40s, for example, might have a child who they plan to pass their farm on to, but who wouldn't show up as a farm labourer in a survey. On paper in Scotland, but in fact there is a likely successor. If, that is, the parent can persuade their child to stay and work the land when they grow up, rather than seeking a life in the big city. So, while there is a problem with ageing in farming, many analyses make it seem worse than it actually is.
A closer look at the statistics reveals another way the nature of the farming workforce is changing. The industry is moving away from a culture that sees only a certain type of person as fit to farm. "The whole demographic of farming tends to be male dominated," says Sutherland. "But the new people who don't have have a family background in it and haven't grown up on a farm-around one third are women. "That's way above average," says Sutherland.
This isn't because there's been a conerted effort to get young women into farming, but rather they are not being so actively "socialised out" of farming, says Sutherland. Anecdotally, the tendency to pass farms down the male line is also decreasing, opeing up the option to grils in farming families.
"Society is becoming more egalitarian generally, so more people can think farming a really interesting career or lifestyle choice," says Sutherland. "It's rebalancing the historic trend."
Opening up farming to non-traditional young farmers means there is more room for growth. But getting your first job in agriculture can still seem like a big leap if you don't have personal experience on a farm.
Kate Collyns worked in magazine publishing and enjoyed her job, but knew she really wanted to be outside more. When she was 27, Collyns came across a story in a magazine she was working on highting a two-year gardening apprenticeship, organised through the Soil Association, a charity promoting organic farming. She knew that this was what she had been waiting for. The scheme involved two seasons on a farm. When the apprenticeship came to an end, Collyns set up as a grower associated with a farm shop and cafe.
There are a large number of young people interested in going into farming in the online communities of market gardeners and growers that Collyns is involved in. But relatively few actually make the jump. The main barries to getting started are the universal ones of money and access to land. "Land prices in the UK are amazing," she says. "If you want just two acres, it can be as much as 40000. That's really difficult."
Especially in such expensive business, Collyns' apprenticeship was invaluable paid experience for someone who couldn't afford to work for free. Collyns now rents 3.5 acres, growing vegetables. "I though i'd like to start up my own place on a smaller scale that would be more manageable for someone without the benefit of a family farm or a huge amount of cash down the back of the sofa to buy land with," she says. "When i took it on it was nothing but grass."
Even with an enthusiastic younger generation of farmers, it may not be enough to fill the growing gap left by older farmers. Technological solutions are also likely to have a part to play. "The average size of farms is going up and they are becoming increasingly mechanised," says Sutherland. "So, do you need as many farmers?"
In Japan, where there is a pronounced issue with an ageing population, young farmers are particularly few and far between. But in Yamaoto-cho, on the east coast of Japan, Hiroki Iwasa, an IT engineer in his early forties, is poineerning a new way of farming that has more appeal to younger people. With little farming knowledge, Iwasa put his tech expertise to use instead, creating greenhouses run not by conditions, but by computers. Automated systems regulate the growing environment to precise ideal conditions, controlling every down to the humidity, carbon dioxide, nutrients, water and temperature. The result is that a single strawberry can fetch up to $9, sold to high-end shops in the cities, in Japan and abroad. Iwasa employs 100 people, offering them better benefits and work-life balance than many traditional farms, he says.
With efforts to improve access to farming, the picture could slowly start to change. The typical farmer producing the food on supermarket shelves may become a little less grey-haired. They might well be a woman, rather than a man. They may have grown up in a city, and not on a farm. And they may spend most of their time at work sitting behind a comuputer, rather than in a tractor. Like Collyns, perhaps they took to the industry not because it was what their parents did, but from a conscious choice-because this is what they always wanted to do.
