European Central: Spain Protecting Future Food Production Through Programa Puebla
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European countries have largely had a reliable food supply during the ongoing pandemic. Spanish agricultural companies have realized this may not always be the case. While food production has been declared essential during the pandemic, the future workforce in rural areas where food production occurs is shrinking and aging in Spain and across Europe. Programa Puebla is funded by Corteva and La Alianza Española para la Agricultura Sostenible (Spanish Alliance for a Sustainable Agriculture). Programa Puebla is aimed to help younger people complete innovative projects to develop the agriculture industry in rural areas of Spain. A committee will award funding to the six most competitive proposals in order to execute their plans. The committee will evaluate projects based on their novelty, efficiency, and permanence. The project hopes that through the six projects that will receive funding, rural Spain can reverse the trend of people moving to urban areas. Food is a basic human need, and Corteva aims to help improve the quality of life of those who live in agricultural areas.
Countries all across Europe have a shrinking rural population. Ivor Teslenko, President of Europe at Corteva recognizes the issues of the continuing decline of rural populations. As younger people continue to leave the countryside, schools continue to close, rural areas have fewer resources and fewer jobs. This creates a vicious cycle of people continuing to leave rural areas due to fewer opportunities. Investments are crucial in order to stop this cycle and help bring people back to rural areas, particularly younger people. It is pertinent to attract younger people to the agriculture industry in order to protect the food supply in the future. This is why Corteva has created Programa Puebla.
Mr. Teslenko also illustrates the problems in Central and Eastern Europe. Corteva has started to work with social media influencers to promote jobs in the agriculture industry. Similar to Spain, Central and Eastern Europe are struggling to get younger generations interested in working in agriculture or living in rural areas. Only 1 percent of teenagers in Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic surveyed by Corteva said they were considering a job in agriculture. Of teenagers whose parents work in agriculture, only 2 percent said they were planning on a job in agriculture. Based on the survey results, the social media influencers might have very little impact on the choices of young people in Central and Eastern Europe. 70 percent of teenagers in the poll stated that their career goal was primarily their choice, meanwhile, only 9 percent of respondents said their career goal was primarily influenced by a social media blogger or vlogger.
The survey also provides additional clues as to why it is difficult to attract younger people to work in agriculture. Based on the results, the ways people thought about agriculture most often included the belief that it is hard to make good money in agriculture, agriculture is a career choice only for people who live in villages, agriculture is the only industry for men, consider agriculture as a mainly labor-intensive industry, and finally, living conditions were too poor in the countryside. European governments need to work to fight these stereotypes that the younger people have about agriculture in order to prevent further depopulation from rural areas. Countries need to show that there are a variety of career options in agriculture that are not solely manual intensive and also work to get teenage girls interested in agriculture as well.
Plan Repuebla
This is not the first project created in Spain to target development in the countryside. Several years ago the Spanish government created PlanRepuebla. This project is targeting nine rural provinces of Spain. PlanRepuebla aims to address concerns regarding the quality of life, basic infrastructure, and find ways to incentivize rural development in smaller towns in these provinces. On the website for the project, it is possible to view basic data regarding these provinces and look at a list of towns the project aims to assist. The webpage for each province also includes a list of job opportunities that are not related to agriculture. This project is divided into two phases. The first phase of PlanRepuebla is focused on working with small towns in the targeted provinces to identify a list of housing that needs to be renovated in order to be inhabitable. The second phase will then work on attracting people to this renovated housing with reasonable prices. Anyone who opens a business in rural Spain will receive a significant tax break. For the first 24 months, new businesses that open in rural areas will only pay 50 euros a month in taxes.
Europe’s Rural-Urban Divide
In Europe, the rural population continues to shrink as people move to urban areas. Only two countries have a rural population of over 50 percent, Moldova with 57 percent and Bosnia and Herzegovina with 51 percent. Complicating the situation for Eastern Europe is an overall shrinking population. While countries in Western Europe see their rural population shrinking while their urban population grows, both are shrinking in Eastern Europe. Many Eastern European countries that are also member states of the European Union also struggle with losing a substantial portion of their population to Western European Union member states. As the fertility rate continues to drop across Europe, competition will become fiercer between rural and urban areas for labor.
Besides having fewer economic activities and lower quality infrastructure than cities, rural areas also often have different political views as well. Residents in rural areas also are more likely to be against globalization. Compared to cities that see benefits from globalization, the common sentiment in rural areas is that they are being left behind. In the European Union, rural areas of member states are frequently more likely to blame the EU for their problems and be against it. This has partially led to the popularity of populist and Eurosceptic parties across Europe. Looking at Spain, disgruntled rural voters have helped Vox, a far-right party in Spain. Marine Le Pen, who ran as the candidate for National Front in the 2017 French Presidential election saw a large part of her support come from the French countryside that was angered at the decline of traditional industries. Political parties like these are not only gaining popularity in national governments but the European Parliament as well. National governments and the European Union need to work to address the issues in the European countryside and ensure that that Europeans in rural areas do not feel forgotten.
