Farm Succession and Retirement across Continents and Cultures: A Focus on Ireland and Iowa

Abstract

Overcoming the farming community’s stalwart persistent adherence to traditional succession and retirement practices, which effectively obstructs farmland transfer to the next generation, is a pressing matter for contemporary generational renewal in agriculture policy (Dwyer et al. 2019). Extensive research from the Republic of Ireland by Conway et al. (2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; 2021) highlights an excessive preoccupation with financial incentives encouraging the process, however, with limited value placed on how painful it is for older farmers ‘let go’ of their farms and their ingrained productivist self-image in later life. US research finds that in many cases, older farmers’ sense of place and purpose attached to family farms supersedes economic imperatives stimulating farm transfer to the next generation, which indicates the overwhelming significance of lifestyle over profit (Kirkpatrick 2012; 2013). However, such sentiments have gone unnoticed over the past four decades as there has been little focus on the needs and requirements of older farmers within policy/academic discussion, even though this cohort ultimately have the power and resources to decide whether intergenerational farm transition takes place (Commins 1973; Conway et al. 2017; Leonard et al. 2017).

This study draws on a baseline analysis of International FARMTRANSFERS Survey data obtained from the Republic of Ireland and the US state of Iowa to identify and compare rates and patterns of succession and older farmers’ similarities and/or differences in attitudes and intentions towards retirement. The FARMTRANSFERS project is an international collaborative effort around a common research instrument that “yields a range of (largely quantitative) data relating to the pattern, process and speed of succession and retirement which provides a firm base for future inquiries utilizing different methodologies” (Lobley and Baker 2012, p. 15). The survey, based on an original design by Errington and Tranter (1991), has now been replicated in 12 countries (see figure 1) and eight US states (see figure 2) and completed by almost 17,000 farmers worldwide.