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EU’s beleaguered agriculture sector needs revamp to attract next generation of farmers

by gary cartwright
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The EU’s beleaguered agriculture sector needs revamp to attract next generation of farmers
After a punishing year of climate change-fuelled extreme weather, Spain is now tackling a
pressing human threat to its agriculture sector: labour shortages. From 1 March, the Spanish
Government has moved to fill the gap by granting undocumented migrants living in the
country for at least two years with a temporary residence permit if they enroll in a
vocational training programme. But the Iberian nation is hardly unique in its dearth of
farmers, with a range of socioeconomic, sociological and image challenges contributing to a
global labour and skills crisis.

The EU’s farming sector is facing a particularly sharp demographic dilemma, as difficulties
attracting young people leave a rapidly aging workforce. Given that Brussels’s brewing agri-
food policy threatens to compound entry barriers for the next generation of farmers,
policymakers must deploy both short-term, migration-based solutions and systemic,
innovative interventions to revamp and restore the image of this beleaguered yet vital
sector.

Difficult conditions driving generational skills gap
Over the coming decade, the EU faces an alarming farming skills gap, with employment in
the agriculture sector projected to plummet by 13% while demand rises. A toxic combination
of sector-specific and sociological factors, including low wages, high land and equipment
start-up costs, difficult working conditions, rural flight and a negative public image, has
increasingly discouraged younger generations from pursuing a career in farming.

The numbers are stark. In the EU, only 11% of farms are operated by under-40s, with the
over-65 to under-35 farmer ratio at a staggering 22-to-1, 8-to-1 and 7-to-1 in Cyprus, the
Netherlands and Greece, respectively. Demographic pressures are affecting Central and
Eastern Europe particularly harshly, leaving 40% of independent Hungarian farmers, 90% of
Czech agricultural firms and a large part of Slovakia’s agri-food industry facing labour
shortages across the skills spectrum due to years of Western emigration and a growing
preference for city life.

While the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) includes provisions for a more equitable
allocation of financial support for farmers across the EU, which would ideally entice young
farmers from hard-hit regions, the CAP simply lacks the firepower to tear down the most
pernicious obstacles to ‘generational renewal’ – namely land and capital access.

EU’s ‘Farm to Fork’ fiasco;

Beyond these substantial farming entry barriers, ill-conceived EU agri-food policy is adding
fuel to the fire. As part of its flagship ‘Farm to Fork’ (F2F) strategy, the Commission has set
green and healthy food targets including boosting organic farming to 25%, slashing chemical
pesticide use by 50% by 2030 and implementing a bloc-wide Front-of-Package (FOP) healthy
food label to tackle obesity.

Yet after years of wrangling, the prospects for these policies look grim, with a Commission
document in December revealing strong political divisions and gridlock, meaning they may
not get over the line before the 2024 EU elections.

As a recently-published German study has found, meeting F2F’s organic farming target
would significantly reduce yields at a time when European farmers are already facing
significant economic and competition headwinds, with twice as much land per unit of grain
as conventional farming needed. The similarly unscientific approach informing the pesticides
target, which MEPs, farming industry representatives and member-states such as Poland and
Romania have widely criticised for failing to factor in productivity and food security impacts,
has equally permeated the FOP debate.While the France-created Nutri-Score system once led the pack of existing FOPs underconsideration for the Commission’s final proposal, its shortcomings for both farmers and
consumers have since come to light, leading the EU executive to delay its decision late last
year to a still-unspecified date in 2023 amid calls for an impact assessment yet to surface.

Criticism of Nutri-Score has largely focused on its negative, punitive approach, in which
foods are given absolutist grades on healthiness based on an unreliable algorithm that overly
weights salt, fat and sugar content while largely overlooking the broader health benefits of
traditional PDOs product like olive oil and cheeses, whose farmers would be subjected to an
unfairly disadvantaged by a Nutri-Score-like FOP system. More broadly, Nutri-Score plays
into the hands of agri-food giants like Nestle and Danone, whose misleadingly positive Nutri-
scores and pro-Nutri-Score lobbying efforts raise serious questions over the system’s
legitimacy.

Tech and people-focused innovation.

Just as the modern tractor transformed agriculture, the sector urgently needs a new wave of
innovation to revarnish farming’s public image while improving working conditions – not
scientifically-dubious, bureaucratic policy. As the OECD has highlighted, “emerging labour-
saving technologies” can make the sector “more attractive and responsive to new
demands.”

Encouragingly, European startups are shaking up the agriculture sector with technologies
including IoT, AI and robotics to tackle labour shortages as well as productivity and climate
change challenges. Empowered with advanced tech solutions from pioneers like Ukraine’s
Droppity, farmers can optimise operations, including crop health monitoring and pesticide
application, to boost yields while reducing inputs, labour demand and environmental
disruption. The EU is also getting on board, with the Commission launching a €7.9 million
project, Robs4Crops, last year to support labour-short farmers with robotics and
automation.

But while tech-driven innovation is key for easing financial pressures and plugging labour
gaps, these policies must be complemented with digital upskilling initiatives, such as the
Palette Skills-led Automation and Digital Agriculture Specialist Program established last April
to help agricultural businesses find the skilled workers.

Moreover, while digital technologies promise to render farming more appealing to new generations, public image enhancement needs to be paired with ambitious, youth-targeted financial support schemes to make the
farming more accessible.The sector should take note of the “Land Generation” initiative recently launched in Italy by Ismea, whose comprehensive approach will fund state loans for experienced, under-41 farmers and inexperienced under-35 farmers to buy farmland, as well as additional financing for new farming companies.

Aimed at both tackling the generational farming gap in Europe and accelerating climate-proof agricultural innovation, its model is right on target. Widely rolling out these types of initiatives could play a key role in revitalising farming with a young wave of workers keen to help build a healthy, sustainable and productive food system.

As Spain has understood, migration can be an important part of the mix, but Brussels must avoid undermining positive long-term measures with misguided policies that would likely make life even harder for farmers.

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