O'Brien: 'We need to make farming more enticing for young people'
More work has to be done to encourage young people to get into farming, according to the South Leinster chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), Paul O’Brien.
O’Brien was speaking at the RDS Finding Common Ground festival which continues today (Thursday, April 10) in Dublin .
A sheep and tillage farmer in Co. Kilkenny, O’Brien highlighted the importance of generational renewal during the Opportunities for New Land Use Change panel.
He said that it is very hard to entice somebody into agriculture, and described it is one the IFA's "key problems".
O'Brien said: "It’s a problem that there's considerably more opportunities in the wider economy to do something else with your time."
"The reality is that every industry needs a new cohort of younger innovators to come into the industry to drive change. You can only do that if you can suggest to them that there is going to be a financial mechanism for you to always be there."
"Young people are looking at the lifestyle - their parents are farmers. They’re saying ‘I'm going to be working seven days a week, I don't want to be getting up at three in the morning to lamb ewes, I don't want to be to doing that’. We have to make it enticing for them".
During the land use discussion, O'Brien also referenced what he described as problem that needs to be addressed - "land abandonment".
"To me, land abandonment is worse than anything because I don't believe that abandonment does anything for biodiversity," he explained.
He also told the panel about his own situation, and about trying to convince his daughter to get into farming.
He said: "It's actually my daughter who has the most interest in the farm.
"If I'm trying to entice her into farming, as a father, I need to say to her that by the time you get to my age, you will be able to have a viable income."
But O'Brien is also concerned about the expectations that are put on farmers from other industries.
"I personally have a problem with the transition that's been expected of us, because I see the alternatives to what we do, which is livestock production, crop production.
I don't see a financial viability for anything else at the moment," he claimed.
"Any environmental schemes that farmers have been engaged in has become more and more burdensome, and less and less rewarding."
