New Law in Italy Incentivizes Young People to Become Farmers

The Italian Parliament has passed a new law to increase the num­ber of young farm­ers in the coun­try.

This leg­is­la­tion pro­vides fund­ing and ini­tia­tives to address the gen­er­a­tional gap in agri­cul­ture by sup­port­ing com­pa­nies with new ideas and tech­nolo­gies and pri­or­i­tiz­ing inno­v­a­tive entre­pre­neur­ial skills.

The law seeks to facil­i­tate the expan­sion of exist­ing ven­tures and the cre­ation of new ones by farm­ers under the age of 41.

If coop­er­a­tives are inter­ested in ini­tia­tives related to this law, they will qual­ify for the new funds only if at least half of their mem­bers are younger than 41.

While a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Italian agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies also engage in other sec­tors, this law will exclu­sively sup­port enti­ties that pri­mar­ily focus on agri­cul­ture.

In the final approved text, the total funds allo­cated by the law have been adjusted from the ini­tially pro­posed €100 mil­lion to €15 mil­lion per annum between 2024 and 2029.

These funds will co-finance devel­op­ment pro­grams pro­posed by regional author­i­ties through­out the coun­try, includ­ing the acqui­si­tion of farm­land and agri­cul­tural equip­ment.

Additionally, the law reduces the legal and bureau­cratic expenses asso­ci­ated with land pur­chases by 50 per­cent.

Projects that incor­po­rate tech­no­log­i­cal upgrades and prod­uct inno­va­tion strate­gies will be pri­or­i­tized. Adopting best agri­cul­tural prac­tices, par­tic­u­larly pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture, will also be pri­or­i­tized.

The law will encour­age a range of new ini­tia­tives within the com­mu­nity orga­nized by local author­i­ties, such as work­shops, sem­i­nars and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of new young farm­ers in agri­cul­tural fairs and events.

The law will also intro­duce a favor­able tax regime for new farm­ing com­pa­nies and those expand­ing.

Under this law, a new National Observatory for Youth Entrepreneurship and Employment in Agriculture (Onilga) will also be estab­lished.

This body will include experts from sev­eral min­istries, farm­ing asso­ci­a­tions and spe­cial­ized orga­ni­za­tions such as the Institute for Services to the Agricultural Market (Ismea) and the Council for Research in Agriculture and Analysis of the Agri-Economy (Crea).

This law is the lat­est effort in a long-fought strug­gle against the preva­lent issue of an aging farm­ing pop­u­la­tion in Italy.

According to the most recent General Census of Agriculture pub­lished in 2022 by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat), the num­ber of agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies led by young peo­ple fell from 11.5 per­cent in 2010 to 9.3 per­cent in 2020.

The major­ity of the remain­ing com­pa­nies are often man­aged by farm­ers over the age of 65. In 2021, Ismea reported that in Italy, there are 11 farm­ers over the age of 65 for each farmer under the age of 40.

The Istat Census revealed a total of 1.13 mil­lion agri­cul­tural enti­ties in the coun­try in 2020, with only 104,886 led by entre­pre­neurs under 40.

Regarding the olive oil sec­tor, Ismea reported in 2021 that only 4.6 per­cent of the spe­cial­ized olive farm­ing com­pa­nies are led by farm­ers under 40, much lower than the 7.9 per­cent reported for the entire Italian agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

Istat noted that younger farm­ers are more likely to adopt the lat­est tech­nolo­gies and engage in organic farm­ing, mak­ing their enter­prises more com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket.

These com­pa­nies are typ­i­cally larger than aver­age, oper­ate on leased land and are sig­nif­i­cantly more dig­i­tal­ized and inno­v­a­tive than those led by older gen­er­a­tions.