{"id":135078,"date":"2024-11-04T07:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T05:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/fi\/news\/we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by\/"},"modified":"2024-11-04T07:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T05:40:00","slug":"we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/news\/we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We didn\u2019t realise how hard it is\u2019: small farmers in Europe struggle to get by"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <p>You are unauthorized to view this page.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-login-form-wrap\">\n            \n<div class=\"mp_wrapper mp_login_form\">\n                  <!-- mp-login-form-start -->     <form name=\"mepr_loginform\" id=\"mepr_loginform\" class=\"mepr-form\" action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\" method=\"post\" data-trp-original-action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\">\n            <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_username\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n                              <label for=\"user_login\">Username<\/label>\n        <\/div>\n        <input type=\"text\" name=\"log\" id=\"user_login\" value=\"\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_password\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n          <label for=\"user_pass\">Password<\/label>\n          <div class=\"mp-hide-pw\">\n            <input type=\"password\" name=\"pwd\" id=\"user_pass\" value=\"\" \/>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"button mp-hide-pw hide-if-no-js\" data-toggle=\"0\" aria-label=\"Show password\">\n              <span class=\"dashicons dashicons-visibility\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n            <\/button>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <div>\n        <label><input name=\"rememberme\" type=\"checkbox\" id=\"rememberme\" value=\"forever\" \/> Remember Me<\/label>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n      <div class=\"submit\">\n        <input type=\"submit\" name=\"wp-submit\" id=\"wp-submit\" class=\"button-primary mepr-share-button\" value=\"Log In\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_to\" value=\"\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135078\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_process_login_form\" value=\"true\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_is_login_page\" value=\"false\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n    <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"trp-form-language\" value=\"en\"\/><\/form>\n    <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n    <div class=\"mepr-login-actions\">\n        <a\n          href=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/?action=forgot_password\"\n          title=\"Click here to reset your password\"\n        >\n          Forgot Password        <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n\n      \n    <!-- mp-login-form-end --> \n  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"smart_content_wrapper\">\n<p>Brutal economic situation has inflicted misery on farmers who struggle to turn a profit and forced some to look for alternative streams of revenue. When Coen van den Bighelaar first spoke to school friends about taking over their parents\u2019 dairy farms, he was the only one of the four to voice serious doubts. Fresh out of university, he was making more money in a comfortable office than his father did toiling for twice as long in the field.<\/p>\n<p>But six years later, Bighelaar has followed in his parents\u2019 footsteps, while his friends\u2019 enthusiasm has waned. One quit farming to take a job in logistics. Another opened a daycare centre to supplement the income from selling milk. A third is thinking about buying land and moving to Canada. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard,\u201d says Bighelaar, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in the Netherlands who feels a mix of hope and fear about the future. \u201cA lot of young farmers quit because they don\u2019t see any perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of small and medium-sized farms in Europe shut up shop each year, unable to survive from selling food at the dirt-cheap prices that big competitors offer. The brutal economic situation has inflicted misery on farmers who struggle to turn a profit and forced some to give up or look for additional streams of revenue. Ma\u0142gorzata Maj, who runs a guest house on her parents\u2019 20-hectare sheep farm in south-west Poland, says most of her income now comes from tourists. The profit margins on sheep are so small that \u201cwe wouldn\u2019t be able to survive\u201d without guests, she says.<\/p>\n<p>The average income on European farms is rising but so, too, is the earnings gap between the biggest and smallest farms, a Guardian analysis of pay data found. Agricultural economists say the death of small farms is being driven by economies of scale and leaps in technology that big farms are more able to embrace. They can spread capital costs such as large tractors and milking robots over more crops and animals, allowing them to sell at prices that small farms cannot match. \u201cWe would need to have hundreds of hectares of land and breed thousands of sheep to be able to get a proper income,\u201d says Maj, who remembers the stress her parents experienced trying to support a family of seven from farming. \u201cAs kids, we didn\u2019t realise how difficult it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Small farmers who try to expand or modernise also face hurdles. They say they struggle to get loans that would let them make the investments needed to compete with industrial farms. \u201cBanks usually don\u2019t like to give credit to farmers,\u201d says Carlos Franco, a blueberry farmer near Lisbon. \u201cIf you have a pig they can give you a sausage \u2013 but the opposite is not possible. It\u2019s very difficult for people to begin without assets to give as collateral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2024\/nov\/03\/we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by\">Read more&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2024\/nov\/03\/we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by\">The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/csr-news-en\/we-didnt-realise-how-hard-it-is-small-farmers-in-europe-struggle-to-get-by\/\">\u2018We didn\u2019t realise how hard it is\u2019: small farmers in Europe struggle to get by<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\">Vastuullisuusuutiset.fi<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[555,274,16775],"class_list":["post-135078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-csr-news-en","tag-eu","tag-small-farmer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}