My father always told me we’d build a bridge when we got to the river. Instead, we just widened the ditch.” Yves told me this with a mix of humour and sadness five years ago, when he was a young student at ITA and taking part in one of our research projects on unsuccessful attempts at getting established in the farming business. Today, Yves is a construction worker. He had always wanted to take over the family farm but his father, worried about the future, kept putting it off year after year. I met him again at a seminar in La Pocatière on making a successful start in farming. “I haven’t given up on the idea, but I’ll need to find another farm because, you see, my father took everything down, all the better to remain the master”, he told me, resorting to that same brand of humour with a touch of philosophy. It’s a pity because, just as with successful transfers, abandoned attempts and failures begin long in advance, and in the case of both successes and failures, the parents’ responsibility is a determining factor. If parents convey to their children that farming is a line of work that is best avoided – that it’s a business that should be left to outsiders, a matter of control rather than confidence or that it’s work for males only, while motivated young women wait futilely for a signal of encouragement – the result is pretty much a foregone conclusion. How many times I’ve heard farmers declare they wanted to transfer their business when, in fact, they wanted to sell!

The Family Farm: From Passion to Prison
With regard to getting established, not all young people see farm life from the same viewpoint. While it’s often said that the primary contributing factor to success is a passion for the business, I’ve met many young persons who had this abiding passion but were forced nonetheless to abandon their dream. Such love for the work is indeed essential but it is not enough and it is more easily sustained when young farmers have parents behind them who have worked their land diligently and who gradually hand over the reins of power.

Not everyone has the will and the preparation exhibited by Yves, the classic young person for whom farming is a passion. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do!”, he told me. At the other end of the spectrum, we find young people for whom the farm has become a prison. In their case, getting established reveals itself to be the realization of their parents’ dream and not their own. They feel the pressure of being the designated successor on whose shoulders rests the duty of preserving the family’s heritage.

Midway between these polar opposites are those who look upon the family farm they’ve taken over as a cocoon, a comfortable and safe place where – for lack of having found anything better – they can get established and ensure themselves a working future without having to take great pains. And what of those young people who, after losing their job, questioning and setting aside their studies or experiencing an unfortunate family event, have found themselves taking over the family farm almost by accident – with the farm in this case becoming an opportunity?

Lastly, there are those women who have gone to great lengths in terms of preparation and training in order to show their parents that they have the "soundly established" seal of quality stamped on their forehead. For them, the farm represents a mission but, all too often, they still overhear farmers, with females at their side, saying they have no one to whom they can pass on the farm. We can only hope that, for these young women, getting established in farming becomes "mission possible"!