Ireland has the second oldest agricultural workforce in Europe and the fewest women working in agriculture, new figures from Eurostat reveal.
Almost 22% of the people working in agriculture in this country are aged 65 or older, according to the European Commission’s statistics hub.
Only Portugal has a higher percentage of its agriculture workforce aged 65 or over, with 42% of Portuguese workers in the oldest age bracket.
Older workers
Ireland has more than twice as many older workers as the EU average across 28 member states, which stands at just 9%.
The UK is in third position for older workers, with almost 19% of its farm workers aged 65 or older.
Almost 60% of those working in agriculture in the EU last year were aged 40 to 64 years old, while 32% were less than 40, and 9% were over 64.
Ireland lags behind many states when it comes to having younger workers.
Some 22.2% of Irish farm workers are aged 15 to 39, compared with the EU average of almost 32%.
Only Portugal (13.9%) and Malta (21.1%) have fewer younger workers than Ireland.
Women
Meanwhile, Ireland has by far the lowest proportion of women working in the agricultural sector.
Just 11.6% of farm workers in Ireland are women, less than a third of the EU average of 35.1%.
Women account for more than 40 % of the agricultural workforce in Austria (44.5%), Romania (43.1%), Poland, Greece and Slovenia (41.1% each).
Denmark is the closest to Ireland in terms of how few women work in the sector, at just under 20% female workers.
Ireland is also close to the bottom of the league table for the percentage of female farm managers. Just 11% of farm managers in this country are women.
Do you know the average age of an Irish female farmer?
Exclusive: Female make up just 3% of dairy co-op boards
Poll: 74% of voters would leave the farm to the child most interested in farming
SHARING OPTIONS