Transferring the Family Farm: The Human Element
Intergenerational family farm transfer is a complex and highly topical issue that is increasingly seen as crucial to the survival, continuity and future prosperity of the agricultural sector, traditional family farm and broader sustainability of rural communities. While financial incentives to stimulate and entice the process are important, there are many more facets to the farm transfer decision-making process, which in a large part have been neglected. This has resulted in the formulation and implementation of largely unsuccessful policy strategies, which have had little regard for elderly farmers’ emotions. One key example was the recent Early Retirement Scheme (ERS 3), which requested farmers retiring under the scheme to ‘cease agricultural activity forever’. Essentially, farmers were asked to revise their self-perceptions upon retirement. It is in probing the behavioural intentions and attitudes of older farmers towards succession and retirement that this research is based.