{"id":58313,"date":"2021-06-19T10:37:30","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T15:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58313"},"modified":"2021-06-19T10:37:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-19T15:37:30","slug":"finding-meaning-in-the-hard-work-of-farming-and-growing-what-will-drive-the-next-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58313","title":{"rendered":"Finding meaning in the hard work of farming and growing: What will drive the next generation?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Finding meaning in the hard work of farming and growing: What will drive the next generation?<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

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My husband Nathan and I run a small-scale organic farm in West Wales that specialises in edible horticulture and we are currently looking for an assistant grower. Having lost our last assistant grower after about a year and half of employment, we have been posting the job description pretty much anywhere we can for more than three months now. We had two good applications that went nowhere and a few conversations with less experienced people who didn\u2019t really want a full-time job. In the interim, we have taken on a temporary assistant grower finishing up a postgraduate degree in Sustainable Food and Natural Resources \u2013 that\u2019s a road that likely doesn\u2019t lead to the field. And we don\u2019t seem to be the only ones struggling to hire\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of talk post-Brexit about where farm labour is going to come from. We all know the story \u2013 the average age of farmers is around 60 and while there are young people interested in farming and growing, especially on the organic and regenerative end of it, it\u2019s not something that\u2019s seen as either lucrative or easy. And the rush of interest in farming and growing that brought in many young first-generation farmers in the last decade is waning, I fear. The seminal 2014 New York Times piece,\u00a0Don\u2019t let your children grow-up to be farmers<\/em><\/a>\u00a0argued for the futility of the endeavour in the face of well-heeled \u2018non-profit\u2019 farms sucking up grants, \u2018hobby farmers\u2019 taking space in local farmers\u2019 markets and the brutality of carrying heavy student loans while breaking your back in the field. While this is an American context,\u00a0it is still not so very far from the reality in Britain<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that economic playing field is still very uneven.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding meaning in the hard work of farming and growing: What will drive the next generation? My husband Nathan and I run a small-scale organic farm in West Wales that specialises in edible horticulture and we are currently looking for an assistant grower. Having lost our last assistant grower after about a year and half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30708,299,1912,6867],"class_list":["post-58313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-alicia-miller","tag-farming","tag-food-production","tag-sustainable-food-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58314,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58313\/revisions\/58314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}