Home › General News › Article

The back-to-the-land trend rises: young people in Greece and the UK launch a new agricultural movement

General News By Emily Carter 0 views

The "back-to-the-land" movement of the 1970s echoes across the decades to today.

Image source/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/teddyruxpin2/5848457743/

Young People Return to Farming, Sparking a New Agricultural Movement

As the financial catastrophe swept across Greece, many young people who had previously made a living in the cities - later unemployed and unable to find suitable work - along with construction workers, miners, and those forced into retirement, had no choice but to seek another way out.

Some applied to maritime schools or agricultural schools; some returned to fishing villages; others went back to family farms they had inherited but never truly worked, abandoned for years, and began growing potatoes and vegetables to feed themselves and get through the crisis.

Some used their family savings to rent or buy farmland, preparing to launch export-oriented agricultural businesses. At first, farming was a difficult challenge for them; although harvests were meager and wages thin, it helped them begin a new life.

In numerous media interviews, some Greek farmers who had not chosen to leave their homes and backgrounds to work in the capital, Athens, during the boom years of industry and commerce now feel fortunate that they were able to stay and work their own land all along, and thus did not have to face the many problems that new farmers must solve.

Europe's Food Sovereignty Movement

In the United Kingdom, which sits at the center of the global financial industry, people have long raised the question: can the UK produce enough food to feed its own citizens?

Industry and academia continually call for the UK's urgent need for a new generation of farmers. With energy problems, food price problems, and the future problem of population explosion, many have come to realize that the consequence of free trade is that the EU pays farmers to leave their land fallow - a policy that seems all the more absurd when the world faces food shortages.

As a result, the concepts and trends of "food sovereignty" and "zero-kilometer shopping" have grown against the tide. Besides tending to buy local ingredients, many people rent land to grow vegetables. In a simple life, the local terroir is displayed on your dining table through agricultural products; you know that the food on your table was grown from the soil by your own hands, unlike complex financial capitalism, which leads us toward a vast and unknown direction.

In Europe at this time, many office workers facing enormous work pressure are also turning toward a green path. They hope to adopt a different lifestyle, to be able to eat vegetables they have grown themselves, to reduce outside purchasing, and to move toward a healthier way of living.

The Modern "Back-to-the-Land" Movement

When these highly educated young people full of idealism flee the cities one after another to become farmers in the countryside, such a trend may evoke another "back-to-the-land" movement similar to that of 1970s America. In the 1970s, a group of farmers who shared ecological and lifestyle ideals settled in New York State, Vermont, and Northern California in the United States. In fact, unlike the "back-to-the-landers" of old, today's "back-to-the-landers" are scattered all over the world; some of them intern on farms, look online for their next possible job in their spare time, and listen to political news online while they pick crops.

With organic agriculture flourishing today, aspiring modern farmers run their farms as businesses to satisfy this ever-growing industry. Young people who take short-term internships on farms may still leave after experiencing the hardships of farm life; yet a considerable number of them touch the earth with their own hands and cultivate the most natural crops, finding their true selves and the meaning of existence in the countryside.

New agricultural movements have also emerged in small corners of different countries. You can see crops grown by part-time "urban farmers" on vacant lots in cities, in school gardens, and on land near parking lots.

Civil Society Provides Resources to Encourage Young People to Return to Farming

In this wave of returning to farming, academic circles in Europe and America have begun offering more agriculture-related courses to young people who want to pursue agricultural work, from basic planting knowledge to supply chain management, and also including instruction on how to start an agricultural business; many nonprofit organizations have also set up farming camps to help aspiring young farmers in Europe build interpersonal networks for mutual contact and assistance; some independent websites offer basic guidelines and advice to those who want to return to farming; the EU also holds events for all sectors to contribute creative ideas to encourage young people to become farmers.

Whatever the reason for returning to farming, in the process it may already have brought some positive changes to agriculture around the world.

Further Reading

Related Articles