Germany: Why are young people shunning farming?

It's in Zullighöven, a small village in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, that I meet Dorothee Hochgürtel, a farm owner. When I arrive at her farm on a Friday morning in July, she is already waving at me from a distance and pointing to the wooden gate through which I should enter the farm.

I immediately notice the pleasant lush green as far as my eyes can see, giving me the impression of a place seemingly cut off from the rest of the world. 

The 65-year-old has been running the farm since 2001. She keeps more than a hundred  animals, including 30 goats and 60 sheep, and a few horses. Besides that, she has an orchard where she's cultivating over 130 different types of apples.

Preserving old plant species and farming her land in an organic way, without pesticides and chemical fertilizers, have been close to her ever since she decided to become a part-time farmer two decades ago.

A pharmacist by profession, Hochgürtel is still holding down a breadwinning job in the pharmaceutical industry. But it's not the dim prospect of making a living from farming that worries her most these days, she says.

"I know I'm not getting any younger. I'm nearing retirement age and the question I keep asking myself is 'who am I going to leave this farm to?'"

Hochgürtel says that her two children pursued other careers of their own liking and had no interest in the farm. Although she is proud of them, she would have liked them to be interested in taking over. She also doesn't know of any other young people outside her family who are interested in taking over when she retires. 

She is not the only German farmer struggling to find a successor for her farm. A friend of hers, she says, has handed over the operational business of his farm to his 30-year-old son, only to find him struggling for economic survival not long thereafter.  

Work-life balance and land prices

 German agriculture contributes less than 1% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and is less important to the economy than in neighboring France and Poland.

Reinhard Jung, a policy advisor at the Freie Bauern (Free Farmers), a farmers' lobby group, says the German farming sector has come under additional pressure from another corner in recent years: demographic change. 

"The shortage of skilled workers is an issue in all sectors [of the Germany economy]," he told DW, with agriculture being especially disadvantaged in the nationwide race for young people.

As young people today have a "desire for a good work-life balance," says Jung, the long hours of hard work and no holidays put in by older generations of German farmers is "not an option" for the young.

Moreover, young farmers whose families don't own farms here find it increasingly difficult to purchase or even lease farming land due to high prices that have steeply gone up in the past decade. Land speculation in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis and the heightenend interest of multinational food concerns in arable land are preventing prices from falling again. 

EU bureaucracy worse than bad weather?

What's also increasingly worrying Hochgürtel at her farm in Zullighöven is the rising frequency of extreme weather conditions.

She attributes the unfavorable weather to climate change that would make farming more unpredictable with summer heat waves and, this year, torrential rains that have hit her apple crop. "The losses expected from climate change make running a farm even more expensive," she says. 

However, Jung sees no connection between climate change and young people's unwillingess to work in agriculture. What he considers more discouraging for farmers is the massive amount of bureaucracy created by the European Union to make the bloc's agriculture more sustainable.   

"I've come to realize that a lot of young people want to do agriculture because they like farming. But the regulations around sustainability in agriculture are made by politicians who think that agriculture is bad because we would pollute the environment."

Christina Vogel from the German Agricultural Society (DLG) says it's a "challenge" to embark on a career in agriculture.

"There are numerous demands to comply with today, notably legislation and consumer pressures but also climate change and, of course, prices of farm inputs and farm produce," she told DW.

DLG is a trade association that primarily represents Germany's large agribusinesses, and helps young farmers get started in the industry.

Vogel also thinks the EU's overburdening bureaucracy is an impediment. "To turn this into a viable career choice, prospective farmers need stable long-term perspectives. A key point is to reduce red tape and bureaucracy which can get in the way of optimal business results."

A profession out of sight, out of mind? 

According to economist Panu Poutvaara from the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, the working conditions as well as salaries are the two primary issues causing young people to decide against a career in agriculture.

"It is not surprising that young people are choosing better-paying careers. But the overall economic impact of the labor shortage in agriculture will be small," he said in a statement to DW, referring to agriculture's small contribution to Germany's overall economic output. 

The problems facing German farmers these days caught the limelight of public attention in the winter this year. Thousands of farmers blocked streets in the capital Berlin with their tractors to protest government plans to cut state subsidies for farm diesel.

The protests were only partially successful as the government only agreed to roll out the cuts over a longer period of time rather than scrapping them as the farmers demanded.

So, for most young Germans, working on a farm is probably unimaginable, as I found out during a short sampling of opinions in the streets of Bonn recently.

A young German told me that all he knew about the profession is that it's uncertain and "sounds like a lot of work."

"I'd say, it sounds like I may need to leave the city and go back to the rural areas. It also needs a lot of resilience and patience because of the uncertainty that the farm will produce anything," he said.

Another young woman told me that in a "developed country" a "desire for work-life balance" is justified. "Besides, we are way past the Industrial Revolution, so I don’t think I have ever considered agriculture as a career."

Meanwhile, Hochgürtel is determined to keep living her dream as long as she can walk on the land she proudly owns. She's even making plans for the future that will include showing those who may have forgotten farming as a career the hands that feed them.

"I hope that I can do this for many years to come. I am also hosting guided tours for schools, group events and a big farm festival in the fall. I just want to uphold the idea of farming, and that it can be done differently."

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

Editors note: The article has been corrected to attribute a quote to economist Panu Poutvaara. An earlier version mistakenly attributed the quote to Christoph Zeiner.