Fostering Attractive and Resilient Farming through Generational Renewal

Generational renewal in agriculture is crucial to driving innovation in the sector, and ensuring viable long-term solutions to contemporary challenges of food security, environmental protection and rural economic development. Yet pursuit of agriculture as a profession is often limited to those raised on farms, further hampered by societal perceptions of farming as low status, risky and unrewarding. FarmHeroes will reframe societal perceptions of farming in Europe as a modern, meaningful and attractive profession. It will generate new evidence on how farming is perceived across society, what makes it appealing or unattractive, and actively test how perceptions can be reshaped. Research will address critical evidence gaps: how farmer and farm worker identities are formed; how socio-economic and cultural factors intersect with perceptions of farming; and how households, communities and under-represented groups can open diverse pathways into farming as a profession. Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) are integrated to enrich methodologies and co-develop innovative tools for communication and economic development, including creative foresight, gamification, and collaborative business models. A bespoke AI model will, for the first time, enable systematic mapping of agricultural and related curricula across Europe, broadening the reach of the research and assessing the attractiveness of different curricula to diverse cohorts and entry pathways. A European Youth Farming Survey will test qualitative findings and quantify differences across regions, genders and socio-economic groups. Findings will be translated into accessible, durable resources embedded in existing organisations. These include the Storytelling Platform, training modules and AI Curriculum Evaluation Interface. A network of young farmer Ambassadors, National AgriFutures Action Groups, Macro-Regional Labs, and the European AgriFutures Forum will mobilise diverse stakeholders and co-develop policy mixes and initiatives. By combining youth engagement, cultural innovation, AI-enabled research, inclusivity and macro-regional analysis, FarmHeroes will improve public perceptions of farming, broaden entry pathways, and provide evidence-informed tools to support CAP post-2027 and the long-term attractiveness of European agriculture.