Business models and work cultures among young farmers (2004)

For young entrepreneurs, the future of their farm and of Italian agriculture lies in enhancing quality. In fact, 13.3% of young Italian farmers indicate organic farming as the main area of intervention for a greater development of their market. This is followed by ‘food product safety’ (12.4%), ‘innovative agriculture and products’ (7.0%) and ‘farm quality certification’ (6.4%). This is a sign that the younger generations of farmers are convinced that the development of the Italian agri-food system must be driven, first and foremost, by quality production, which, from this point of view, can represent a concrete job opportunity for segments of the population otherwise destined to feed the plague of exodus or rural unemployment. In any case, quality production is the leitmotif of a corporate competitiveness that pursues the (quantitative) objective of economic profit also through the (qualitative) means of products and production methods with a lower environmental impact. This trend emerges from the results of the sample survey that Eurispes carried out on a sample of 1,000 young entrepreneurs (the direct survey in the field involved the administration of a semi-structured questionnaire to a representative sample of 1,000 Italian agricultural entrepreneurs up to 45 years of age, stratified by gender, territorial macro-division and demographic size of the municipality of residence). At the dawn of the third millennium and in view of market expectations, the ‘main road’ for young people who intend to become agricultural entrepreneurs is to pay more attention to the specialisation and quality of production, as well as a more decisive projection towards future and innovation.