The next generation of Europe's farmers could have holidays – here's how

When Finnish farmer Aleksis Kyrö took over his family’s farm, there were plenty of questions over what the future would look like. But whether he could occasionally step away from his new responsibilities was not one of them. “It was just something that is so normal,” says the farmer who, along with his sister, takes care of a mixed farm with livestock and arable crops.

Every year, the two young farmers have the right to take up to a month away from the farm thanks to Finland’s frontrunner national farm relief system. Set up back in the 1960s, the system allows farmers to take time off each year, with trained replacement workers stepping in to keep operations running.

It means that young farmers like Aleksis grew up watching their parents, and grandparents before them, leave the farm for weeks at a time, secure in the knowledge that their animals and livelihoods were in safe hands.

And so, when the time came to decide whether to take over the family business, the question of rest and respite – two words that rarely go hand in hand with agriculture – was not one that was on the table. For Aleksis, it “took one obstacle away from why would we not take over the farm”.

Yet, a few hundred kilometres away across the border in neighbouring Sweden, dairy farmer Elisabeth Hiden tells a very different story.

“For me, a system like that would be life-changing,” she said. Her husband worked 360 days last year, averaging 16-hour days with just five days off. The year before, he had just two.

Livestock farming, by its nature, offers no natural stopping point. Cows must be milked, fed and monitored every day. Without external support, stepping away, however briefly, feels impossible.

For Elisabeth, the consequences extend far beyond exhaustion.

“There’s a huge mental strain,” she explains, pointing to rising concerns about mental health in farming communities. At the same time, farmers face growing pressure to adopt more sustainable and innovative practices. “Just a little moment to reflect would really help, because as farmers, you’re constantly running,” Elisabeth adds.

But the lack of any farm relief services also sends a signal to the next generation that the sector is “stuck in the past”, with an overreliance on traditional gender roles and close family structures nearby – a dynamic that new or young entrants into farming often either do not want or have. “I take a huge responsibility for the kids, and I take a huge responsibility for the cows,” she said, calling it an “old-fashioned way of living”.

And her children, in turn, are receiving a clear signal: that farming families do not get to be part of Swedish society. They will not have any Easter holidays from kindergarten, while the other kids will – because Elisabeth and her husband must keep working on the farm. For Elisabeth, it is a worrying message to send to a country where Eurostat data shows only 6.1% of farmers were under 35 in 2020.

It is a stark contrast to how Aleksis remembers his childhood, when each year his family would travel across Europe to attend folk music and dance festivals.

Participating in these kinds of cultural events also helps bolster rural communities, the fabric of which is wearing thin in many of Europe’s rural areas. These events helped create more community cohesion and encouraged people to see they had a life outside of work.

As things currently stand, only a handful of European countries - Finland, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium (Wallonia) and Ireland offer this kind of relief service.

But this could soon change, thanks to a new proposal under the EU’s next farming subsidy programme, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which would give Member States the option to establish their own farm relief schemes, enabling farmers to access replacement workers when they are sick, on leave or dealing with family responsibilities.

The move is part of the EU’s broader push on generational renewal, which includes a new dedicated generational renewal strategy, designed to breathe new life into the sector. As part of this, Member States are required to establish their own national strategies to work towards doubling the share of young and new farmers in the EU, with the aim to reach 24% by 2040. Meanwhile, EU countries are encouraged to invest at least 6% of agricultural spending in generational renewal.

And, with the average age of an EU farmer nearing 60 and only 12% under 40, while one in three rural young people considers leaving due to limited opportunities, lack of services, and social isolation, this change could not come soon enough.

A recent EU CAP Network seminar on 'The Right to Stay for Young Farmers and Rural Youth' brought together some 200 CAP stakeholders to co-create action-oriented proposals that can now be taken up at the national level to transform the ‘right to stay’ into the ‘wish to stay’, and the ambition of the European Commission's strategy into a reality.

The strategy also highlights farm relief services as a key practical lever for change, using CAP funds to help establish such services and to provide wages for replacement workers during short-term absences.

For Elisabeth, this small policy shift carries potentially transformative consequences. “If you really would like to find new people from the next generation to become farmers, you need to solve this problem,” she stressed.

Her testimony tallies with recent conclusions from the EU CAP Network, which have repeatedly highlighted working conditions, work-life balance, gender inclusion and social sustainability as critical – yet often overlooked – barriers to attracting new entrants into farming.

Meanwhile, discussions within the EU CAP Network have increasingly highlighted mental health as a critical dimension of farm sustainability, with farmers pointing to high levels of stress, burnout and isolation, underlining the need for support systems that reflect the realities of agricultural life.

In that sense, farm relief services respond directly to a growing recognition among farming communities and policy circles: without addressing the social dimensions of farming life, from long hours to social isolation, efforts to bring in a new generation risk falling short.

But by ensuring the next generation can finally step away from the fields, Europe may ensure they eventually choose to come back to them.