Planting the seeds for Europe’s rural regeneration
Europe’s rural areas are in decline as younger generations are drawn to urban areas. Working with young people across Europe, the EU-funded RURALIZATION (The opening of rural areas to renew rural generations, jobs and farms) project sought to better understand their life aspirations and how these might be met in rural settings. “It’s not true that most young people dream only of urban living, and although some trends have disadvantaged rural areas, we see new opportunities which can be boosted with the right policies and incentives,” says project coordinator Willem Korthals Altes, professor of Land Development at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Dreams, trends and promising practices
The project team has asked over 2 000 young people across 20 European regions about their dream futures – where would they like to live, doing what for a living, with what lifestyles and facing which obstacles? “Comparing respondents’ current locations to their ideal locations, there is clearly a trend towards aspirational ruralisation,” adds Altes. “For example while 21 % were currently living in a city centre, only 10 % wanted to be in 15 years.” Within the scope of the project, 10 megatrends affecting most areas, 20 trends specific to some regions and 30 localised signs of change, which they termed weak signals have been identified. While some megatrends, such as the impact of climate change and ageing populations, are fairly well established, of particular interest were the trajectories of emerging weak signals and trends. “For example, there has been talk of COVID creating more appreciation for rural living, driven by remote working and an interest in sustainability, but to become a megatrend or even a trend would require enabling policies,” Altes explains. To take the issue of access to land, after investigating legal and policy arrangements across all EU Member States, few were found to focus on generational renewal, with little emphasis on attracting new farming entrants and more on land consolidation. “The EU agricultural land market isn’t functioning equitably, with 52.6 % of land controlled by 3.4 % of farms. Most farmers are over 55 and with farm succession usually based on patriarchal inheritance, gender inequality is stark,” remarks Altes. To tackle these challenges, 30 case studies were conducted to identify promising access to land practices: 10 of rural newcomers, 10 of new farming entrants and 10 of farm inheritors. Sixty-four innovative practices were selected, including support to new entrants before land is identified, farmland accessibility, prioritisation of sustainable and multifunctional land use and securing access for individual farmers. “We defined four building blocks for change: better promotion of innovation; adaptation of land regulations to benefit new entrants; more local authority empowerment; and a revamped CAP to enable access to land,” adds Altes. “We are currently integrating these into advisory material for local authorities and rural change-makers.”
Turning the tide
Urban populations have been forecast to grow by 12 % between 2014 and 2050, but rural regions to decline by 8 %. Meanwhile, urban gross domestic product per person has been calculated at EUR 34 179 compared to EUR 19 104 in rural regions. Such discrepancies threaten social and economic cohesion across the EU. While the EU did allocate EUR 9.6 billion between 2007 and 2020 to support young farmers, in its special 2017 report, the Court of Auditors concluded this was “based on a poorly-defined intervention logic” and it “should be better targeted to foster effective generational renewal.” “We need a novel approach to buck the long-term trend of urbanisation, one which dovetails with regions’ strategies, while contributing to the Cork 2.0 Declaration ‘A Better Life in Rural Areas’,” says Altes. Towards this end, the project team has launched 10 pilot actions related to access to land and land stewardship, alongside the development of a Massive Open Online Course, designed for rural development professionals.
Keywords
RURALIZATION, land, farm, young people, urban, agricultural, rural, depopulation, trends, social innovation
