The reason we’re running out of farmers 2a496s

Barriers to running your own farm can be cultural as well as financial. There’s a huge gender gap in access to land around the world. As many as 150 million people could be lifted out of hunger and poverty if women farmers had the same access to agricultural resources as men, according to the World Food Programme. However, less than 15% of the world’s landowners are women, which means they are removed from making decisions about which crops to grow and whether to buy or sell land.

In Kenya, Fairtrade Africa is working to change that. “For the smallholder farmer, agriculture is not very lucrative. You’ll find that whatever you’re farming, you’re not able to get enough income to sustain your family,” says Joy Muruku, regional communications officer at Fairtrade Africa’s Eastern and Central Africa Network. But Muruku believes that rising unemployment and the growing role of modern technology in farming could prompt some young people to turn back to the land, which means there will be more opportunities to address inequality.

The Growing Women in Coffee project aims to empower women by giving them control over their coffee bushes. The women in the project receive at least 50 coffee bushes from their male relatives, which they tend to and harvest themselves. The money earned from selling the coffee goes straight into the women’s s, giving them a newfound financial independence.

The project is also getting results. They started working with 110 women, but it proved so popular that it has more than tripled in size. The team is considering launching a similar project in Uganda.

The absence of a high standard of living also pushes potential new farmers away from rural areas, according to Andrea Sosa, who researches agriculture at the National University of San Martín in Argentina. “You need access to clean water, internet, education, health”, which are often missing, she says.

In Argentina, rural communities in major grain production regions have long protested that health problems afflicting them are the result of irresponsible use of toxic agricultural chemicals, and poor farming management has been blamed for the sudden appearance of new rivers, cleaving their way through the weakened earth like a knife.

Faced with the effects farming can have on the environment, it’s little wonder that young people in the country have been upping sticks and moving to the city.

But where there are issues with food production’s green credentials, there are also opportunities to engage with young farmers. Kimbal Musk is one of those people hoping that a mixture of technology and environmental values will draw young people back to the industry. His company, Square Roots, uses artificial intelligence and innovative farming techniques to grow health food crops in urban farms. Musk says younger farmers are more attracted to health food crops than commodity crops, like corn, which are used as fuels and animal feeds.

Musk and his team hope that by using highly-controlled environments in shipping containers they can narrow the fine margins needed to turn a profit from salads and herbs without turning to scale.

But to level up the farms of the future, some forward-thinking institutions are turning to cameras, sensors, drones and robots which is creating new opportunities for engineering-minded researchers.

Engineer Manuela Zude-Sasse at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy in Potsdam, , for example, has developed a sensor that predicts the right time to pick apples based on the levels of chlorophyll in the skin of the fruit. Meanwhile Will Flittner, an agricultural engineering student at Harper Adams University is one of a group of researchers using similar technology to equip robot picking arms with the vision required to differentiate ripe fruit from unripe fruit. While Flittner’s technology is still in the prototype phase, “precision agriculture” is a burgeoning field, and some farms are already using robot technology.

In the video below, James Wong learns why deploying new technologies in agriculture could help to attract some of the youngest, brightest minds back to farming.

Preventing food waste isn’t just about feeding the hungry. It also helps farmers earn more money. But it comes with complex infrastructural challenges.

“A whole lot of people in Nigeria don’t have access to [electricity],” says Chinedu Hardy Nwadike, communications manager at ColdHubs. “Those that do don’t have it every day, or they have it maybe eight hours a day.”

ColdHubs is a Nigerian startup that makes solar-powered cold storage units for small farmers in remote areas. With the Nigerian sun beating down, delicate fruits and vegetables spoil in as little as two days. But when kept in cold storage, they stay fresh for up to three weeks.

“When traders buy, they budget for 50% of it being spoiled, especially when they’re buying greens,” Nwadike says. Small farmers pay 100 Naira per day (£0.20) to store a crate of their crops in a cold hub. Their produce can fetch up to 8,000 Naira (£15) at the market, so preventing half of that from going to waste can substantially increase income for farmers and traders alike.

The ColdHubs team also teaches farmers how to stop their crop spoiling before it reaches the cold storage unit.

It’s clear that we need changes in all areas of agriculture if we’re going to attract the next generation of farmers. Sosa believes it’s time for a radical rethink of how society values agriculture. “I think that right now with the pandemic, it’s become clear that an activity as essential as producing food doesn’t have the status that it should have,” says Sosa.

MacGillivray has just one other friend who works in agriculture, but his job usually sparks interest at parties, he says. “People are really interested. Especially in the hydroponics, which they see as something new.”

For now, he’s the only one of his friends who’s actually quit his job to become a farmer. But if our society can begin to break down the barriers that are keeping the next generation of agricultors off the fields, we could see the beginnings of a return to the land.