Working Conditions, Safety, Wellbeing and the Future of Farming in the EU

Bringing together researchers, policymakers, advisors, and agricultural stakeholders to enhance the social sustainability of agriculture.
About this Event

Across Europe, agriculture faces an ageing workforce, declining entry, and persistent difficulty in attracting and retaining people in farming. These challenges are often discussed in general terms. This conference takes a more grounded position: that the attractiveness of farming is determined by the concrete, day-to-day conditions under which farming is done. Understanding and improving these conditions is essential to the future sustainability of family farming.

The conference focuses on a simple proposition. The working conditions and quality of farm work including, but not limited to, health and safety, mental health and wellbeing, work organisation, gender balance and inclusion, and enterprise viability, shape whether farming is a livelihood that people want to enter, remain in, and pass on. Improvements across these dimensions contribute to more attractive and resilient farm systems, and ultimately to generational renewal and the social sustainability of agriculture.

We invite contributions from researchers, policymakers, advisors, and practitioners that advance understanding of these linkages, and that connect evidence to the policies and practices needed to act on them.

Conference themes

We welcome papers, panels, or practice-based contributions addressing one or more of the following:

1. Farmer health and safety: occupational risk, injury prevention, and the working conditions that shape physical health outcomes on farms.
2. Mental health and wellbeing: psychological wellbeing, stress, its determinants and protective factors, and approaches to support including advisory and community-based models.
3. Work organisation and labour: labour efficiency, work-life balance, working time, the organisation of farm work, and the role of technology in shaping the quality of farm work.
4. Gender balance and inclusion: the participation and experience of women, young people, and underrepresented groups in farming, and the conditions that enable inclusive farm workplaces.
5. Generational renewal and social sustainability: succession, new entrants, the attractiveness of farming as a career, and the connections between farm-level conditions and the long-term sustainability of the sector.
6. Enterprise viability and social protection: the economic and structural conditions, including income, retirement provision, and social protection systems, that underpin sustainable farm livelihoods and farm transfer.
7. Other related topics.

We particularly welcome contributions that work across these themes, that bring comparative or cross-national perspectives including those from outside of Europe, and that bridge research, policy, and practice.

Abstracts should be 250 words (maximum) and be submitted as a word document with full title, author names and an indication of which theme the paper will contribute to. Please submit abstracts to [email protected].

Conference overview

The conference will be held over three days from November 3rd to November 5th and is being organised in ​association with the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Day 1 will focus on developing an understanding of how the attractiveness of farming is shaped by working conditions and quality of farm work with presentations and panel discussions focused around the perspectives of policy stakeholders, including a delegation from the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), practitioners and researchers. Days 2 and 3 will focus on the six thematic areas listed above.