FARM - Factors shaping farmer renewal and farming models

The FARM project is driven by three main pressing societal challenges in Spain. First, rural areas are increasingly losing population. Second, farmers are predominantly old and male. Finally, most agriculture in Spain applies conventional farming models that have severe impacts on the environment. To tackle these challenges, it is important to understand which factors encourage young farm managers to settle in underpopulated rural areas, which factors encourage them to adopt sustainable farming models, and which factors are specific for women farm managers. In order to find these factors, students from different vocational schools in four depopulated regions in Spain will participate in the design of the questionnaire and the conduction of in-depth interviews. This questionnaire will then be distributed to ex-students from the schools and we will also run workshops in which our co-researchers will participate in a role-play impersonating those young farmers they previously interviewed. This process is then combined with quantitative secondary data research to gain a more in depth perspective of the object of study. Lastly, as a way to return the project outcomes to the population involved, a theatre play will be done combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Aim

Identify which factors drive mascunilization and aging of rural depopulated regions in Spain and analyze farm sustainability in those areas. In these different areas there is a goal and research question

• demography: What factors favor the settlement of young farmers in sparsely populated rural areas?
• gender study: What factors are specific to young women?
• agroecology: What factors favor the incorporation and adoption of environmentally sustainable models among young farmers?

Created Jan. 20, 2025, 12:57 p.m.

Updated Jan. 20, 2025, 12:58 p.m.

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