Farming 'not sexy or cool enough' to attract the young: Agri SA

According to the Citizen, Agri SA deputy president Theo de Jager said on Monday that commercial farmers could become extinct in the near future. "The average age of a farmer is 62 years. This means we are going to become extinct." An entire generation of new entrants has been overlooked, "we need more ... young people," de Jager told the SA Agricultural Outlook conference in Pretoria.

"We have not made this profession sexy enough. It is not cool to be a farmer. We need to rectify this in a short space of time," de Jager said, adding that a study conducted by Agri SA showed that the country has 37,000 farmers, compared to the 120,000 it had in 1994. The decline in the number of farmers could also be blamed on the collapse of agricultural colleges. Young people were not going into the agricultural sector because farming had not been profitable in South Africa in recent years, and ageing farmers could not take new opportunities created by the new forms of land ownership.

De Jager said the government should consider involving farm workers in its land reform programme, because they already had experience in farming, the Citizen reports.

Read the full article on www.citizen.co.za.