The Central Statistics Office released a raft of Census 2022 numbers this week, and the data for the agriculture sector is sobering reading.

While it will come as no surprise that the average age of people working in agriculture is higher than other industrial groups, the difference between agriculture and the rest in this data is stark.

Across industry as a whole, more than half of workers are under the age of 44. The sector titled “agriculture, forestry and fishing” has just 30% under 44.

At the other end of the age scale, industry as a whole has 4% – one in twenty five – of workers over 65, whereas for agriculture, forestry and fishing that number is 20% over 65, or one in five. (see chart 1)

None of the major industrial sectors have more than 5% of workers over 65, except agriculture, forestry and fishing.

There was also less-than encouraging news from the census on the number of people directly employed in the sector, which was put at 82,228 in 2022. This is a drop of more than 9,000 on the total from census 2011.

In fact, agriculture, forestry and fishing was one of only two from the twenty two industrial sectors which have shown a drop in workers in both the 2011 census and the 2016 census. The other one was the very small “mining and quarrying” sector.

The drop in the number of agriculture workers comes even as the total labour force expanded by more than 13% since 2011. This means that agriculture workers have dropped from 4.1% of the labour force in 2011 to 3.2% in 2022.

The one bright point in the numbers is the increase in female workers in agriculture since 2016. While still one of the lowest in the country, it has climbed from 13% in 2016 to 14.7% in 2022. Much of that increase however was driven by a fall in male workers, with the number of female workers only increasing by 64 in the period – just over 10 per year.

On a regional basis, the change since 2011 is even more stark (see chart 2). The west region – Galway, Mayo and Roscommon – lost more than one in five of its agricultural, forestry and fishing workers in the period.

The west, southwest and midwest being the biggest losers probably comes as little surprise, with those areas usually providing lower returns on more marginal land. The story is completely different in the southeast – Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford – which actually managed to show an increase in employment.

Overall, this week’s data is a reminder of the challenges the agriculture sector continues to face in attracting young people into farming – and encouraging older farmers to hand over to the next generation. With unemployment at historically low levels in the country at the moment, there is a lot of competition for workers, and young people seem to be choosing paths other than farming.

In fact, the last time there was an increase in agricultural employment in Ireland was between 2006 and 2011 – a period which coincided with an economic crash and a massive surge in unemployment. This could be read as implying that farming is a career people will only pick when there is nothing else to do.

Comment

Even though the numbers in this week’s data from the CSO are not terribly surprising, they are still disappointing.

The number of people in farming continuing to fall could well point to an agricultural landscape where farms are getting bigger and efficiencies are improving.

That, however is about the only positive spin that can be put on the data.

Both the number of young people farming and the number of women in agriculture should be seen as policy failures. Time will tell whether measures contained in the current CAP will be enough to turn the tide in a meaningful way, but it seems from here that agriculture will have to do a lot more both to incentivise new entrants and to make it easier for older farmers, who want to, to retire.

Speaking at the European council of young farmers conference earlier this year, Stan Lalor, head of knowledge transfer at Teagasc, said that the “overarching principle” is to design a process that means all sides can take that plunge with as little risk as possible.

It feels like policy is still a long way from achieving those goals.