Introduction: Young People’s Pathways into Farming

Abstract

AbstractThe world’s crisis-ridden agriculture and food systems, besides huge environmental challenges, are facing a looming problem of generational renewal. Farming populations are ageing, many farmers appear to have no successor, and it is widely claimed that young people are not interested in farming; smallholder farming in its present state appears to be so unattractive to young people that they are turning away from agricultural futures. Will there be a new generation of farmers to take the place of today’s ageing farmers? What are the experiences of young people who are establishing themselves as farmers, and how are these pathways gendered? How can young farmers be supported to feed the world’s growing population? These are the questions that stimulated us and our colleagues in Canada, China, India, and Indonesia to join together in the multi-country research project, Becoming a Young Farmer: Young People’s Pathways into Farming in Four Countries. Each team used multi-sited case study research to bring to life the experiences of young farmers and would-be farmers, the various challenges they face, and important differences in their experiences both within and between the countries and study sites. By concentrating on women and men who have managed, or are trying, to set up their own farming livelihoods at a relatively early stage in their lives, we aimed to contribute both to theory by clarifying the generational dimension in the social reproduction of agrarian communities, and to policy by clarifying the barriers that young rural men and women confront in accessing land and other resources as well as the role of policies, institutions, and young people’s own individual and collective efforts in overcoming these barriers.