the Rural is also IN! Young people and agriculture session took place on the 12th of April, 2024, and it was hosted by representatives of DG AGRI in a small room (20 people?) at the European Parliament.

Such a topic — most of the topics, really — could not be properly discussed in the very limited timespan of an hour. And yet we were treated with a poignant introduction to the problem at hand:

— there's a very unequal distribution between urban and rural areas — the first takes much less land, and yet is much more populated; I did not write down the actual figures, but it almost resembled Pareto's Principle.

— the average farmer is a 57 year old man: here have been efforts to lower this average and diversify rural populations, most notably the redefinition of young in a farmer's context. 40 years old, if you're wondering!

— rural areas have well-known problems, such as its remoteness (in many cases, worsened by lack of proper mobility and public transportation), lack of services (most notably healthcare and schools), and limited career opportunities (although, well, remote work...?)

— access to land is often difficult, often more dependant on local laws than Europe-wide policy.

The group was then divided in five subgroups, with the intention of discussing particular themes; I now realise that I did not write my group's theme down, but it was the fifth group, and it had something to do with how does one make farms more attractive?

If my memory serves me, we had Hungarian, Swedish (via Denmark?), and Spanish representation (other than my Portuguese, of course), and we started by briefly introducing ourselves and our experiences with rural living. There were farms in the family, and the experience of moving to countries that had less quality and general enthusiasm for vegetables (guess who?); in my experience, (the idea of) rural living was more prominent from the onset of Covid onwards — and I think this matches what happened with lots of other people —, with my most significant experience being the Summer of 2023 in Slovenia.