The EU’s mission impossible: Stopping young farmers giving up before they’ve even begun

ER Editor: This Politico piece has us shocked. Europe is trying to SALVAGE its INDEPENDENT farms and thus its food production with the next generation of young people. Re-read that.

A reminder of the farming crisis the EU was facing early in 2024 —

Why are farmers protesting across the EU and what can the bloc do about it?

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We’ve just put out this brilliant piece by Canadian journalist Elizabeth Nickson, who gives us the Big Picture on how globalism – over decades – was forcibly shaping government policy everywhere to render natural land unusable, unable to feed and economically sustain local small town populations. Taking over farmland and ranchland was all part of this despicable plan to leave people poor, herded into those hideous 15-minute cities with lab-grown GMO food, of which we have had a very small, threatening taste. Nickson leaves us with optimism, however —

The Bountiful Economy of the Future vs. Globalism

Never expect Politico to give us any meaningful context.

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Brussels wants to fix Europe’s aging farm problem, but its new plan may lack the cash to pull it off.

LUCIA MacKENZIE, BARTOSZ BRZEZINSKI and REBECCA HOLLAND

BRUSSELS — Europe’s food system depends on an endangered species: its farmers.

Every year, thousands of them retire and fewer take their place. Across the countryside, barns are shuttered, land is leased to ever-larger holdings and rural schools quietly close. The result is fewer people growing food, more imports filling supermarket shelves and a profession slipping into decline.

The Commission wants member states to spend 6 percent of their Common Agricultural Policy money on generational renewal — double the current level. | Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

That’s the slow-moving crisis Brussels is set to confront on Tuesday, when Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen unveils the EU’s Strategy for Generational Renewal in Agriculture — a plan to keep the next generation of food producers from giving up before they’ve begun.

Young farmers have been asking lawmakers to act for well over a decade, said Peter Meedendorp, the 25-year-old president of the European Council of Young Farmers, or CEJA, speaking by phone as he rushed back from his tractor on the Dutch farm he runs with his father and brothers.

In the run-up to the strategy’s release, Meedendorp has been splitting his time between the fields and Brussels. While he’s eager to see what Hansen delivers, he’s also wary: “To what extent can we make all the nice recommendations reality in the field if no finance is attached?”

The European Commission wants member countries to spend 6 percent of their Common Agricultural Policy money on generational renewal — double the current level. If countries make good on that target, CEJA’s cause could be on the receiving end of over €17 billion between 2028 and 2034, a budgetary boost compared with recent years.

The question is whether the plan can actually stop Europe’s farms from disappearing.

Priced out

Over a third of farm managers in Europe are over 65, while less than one in eight are under the age of 40.

“It’s not that young people don’t want to farm — it’s that it’s nearly impossible to start,” said Sara Thill, the 21-year-old vice president of Luxembourg’s young farmers group LLJ, in an interview in Brussels last week.

Young farmers struggle to find available and affordable land to start working. One hectare of arable land in the EU costs almost €12,000. That price rises to over €90,000 on average in Meedendorp’s native Netherlands, up from €56,000 a decade ago.

“When you start, the banks ask for guarantees your parents can’t give — it’s a vicious circle,” said Florian Poncelet, a 29-year-old beef farmer who heads Belgian regional young farmers’ association FJA.

Roy Meijer, chair of the Dutch young farmers farmers’ group NAJK, put it bluntly: “Banks look at young farmers as risk. If you’re 25 and want to buy land, forget it.”

Across Europe, young farmers sound more impatient than nostalgic. They see agriculture not as a tradition to protect but a business to reinvent.

“Young farmers aren’t waiting for subsidies,” Meijer said, pushing back against the idea that they expect easy money from Brussels. What they want, he argued, is predictability — rules that don’t change with every new reform, and recognition that they’re entrepreneurs like any others.

“People my age aren’t afraid of innovation,” he added. “We want to use drones, data, AI. But to invest, we need clear, long-term rules. You can’t build a business on shifting ground.”

Upping the ante

Brussels has been trying to lure new farmers for decades through its CAP, with mixed results. Member countries currently dedicate 3 percent of their EU-funded farm payments to young farmer schemes — about €6.8 billion between 2023 and 2027.

Now Hansen wants to up the ante. A recent draft of the strategy, obtained by POLITICO, sets a goal to double the share of EU farmers under 40 to nearly a quarter by 2040.

CONTINUE READING HERE

Featured image source: https://agremso3il.eu/2019/02/26/young-people-and-women-in-eu-farming/

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The EU’s mission impossible: Stopping young farmers giving up before they’ve even begun

ER Editor: This Politico piece has us shocked. Europe is trying to SALVAGE its INDEPENDENT farms and thus its food production with the next generation of young people. Re-read that.

A reminder of the farming crisis the EU was facing early in 2024 —

Why are farmers protesting across the EU and what can the bloc do about it?

The Bountiful Economy of the Future vs. Globalism