Perspectives for farming families in Austria

Farm families today are confronted with two major challenges: In view of the declining prices for agricultural mass-products (as a consequence of technological progress and globalization of markets) they have to develop new concepts of production and marketing in order to secure their material existence. At the same time, they have to create new models of family life which reconcile the requirements of family farming with the postmodern concepts and ideals of partnership, family and leisure time. Thus, the goal of this research project is to investigate how farmers perceive and evaluate their work conditions and their family life, and which ideas and strategies they develop in order to maintain a good quality of life both in economic terms and in regard to their family relationships. Since the problem of securing a sustainable economic basis and the question of creating satisfactory partnership relations and family arrangements are connected to each other in many cases, we will pay particular attention to the interaction between these two dimensions. The focus of this study, however, shall be directed more at the social than at the economic and technical aspects of farming, i.e. at the social identity of the farmers, the work arrangements and division of labor among the members of the farm household, and the relations between the farming couple, their children and the retired old farmers. These issues will be investigated by means of a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. In order to improve the quality of the project, experts from a research institute of rural sociology in Vienna, teachers and students from an Advanced Technical College for Agricultural education and professionals from of counceling project for farming families will be involved in the conceptualization and implementation of the project. In the first stage we will administer the questionnaire of the International Social Survey Programme 2012 on "Family and Gender Roles" to a representative sample of Austrian adults and to an oversample of 250 farmers. This procedure will allow us to compare the attitudes of farmers towards partnership and family with the respective attitudes of the general population; in addition, the ISSP-data will be used for cross-national comparative and longitudinal analyses of family related attitudes and behavior. In the second stage, we will carry out semi-structured in-depth interviews with farmers and farmers wives. In order to get a more differentiated view of the family live and the intergenerational conflicts and tensions at the farm, we intend to interview also members of the older and the younger generation (retired farmers, children) in some cases. In the final stage of the project the results of the empirical investigations will be discussed with experts from the field (representatives from professional associations, agricultural colleges, counseling services for farmers, etc.).

Based on a questionnaire survey and on semi-structured interviews, this research-project has investigated how farmers perceive and evaluate their working conditions and family life at the farm and which strategies farming families develop in order to achieve and to maintain a good quality of life both in economic and private terms. The following are the key results:Family farms today are able to survive economically only if they produce large quantities of agricultural raw products for food-companies or if they develop new strategies such as high quality production, processing of raw products, direct-sale and diversification of farming activities in order to increase their income. An increasing number of farmers seems to prefer the second type of farming because it offers a higher level of personal satisfaction. Most of our respondents strongly identify with their profession and the peasant way of life; however they suffer from dependency on the international agricultural market and from the low price of agricultural products. Farm-work and household tasks at the farm are still divided according to traditional gender-role-concepts; these concepts are positively assessed both by male and by female farmers. However, during the past decades a significant change from hierarchical and patriarchal towards egalitarian and discursive orientations has taken place both with respect to the organization of farm-work and to the private relationships between husband and wife as well as between parents and children. Most respondents emphasize that the collaboration and the mutual support between the farming couple and the old farmers living at the farm in regard to farm-work, child-care and housework improves the life-quality of all family members living at the farm. In the older generation of farmers, however, the close coexistence of three generations was associated with strong social constraints and social conflicts. In order to reduce potential conflicts and to gain more privacy, younger farmer place emphasis on a clear separation of the living space of the retired farmers from the living space of the nuclear family of the farmers couple. The transfer of the farm from one generation to the next within the family continues to be important an goal for farming families. However, the social pressure on the farmers children to meet this expectation has become weaker today. Thus, farm-takeover becomes more a matter of a free decision of the potential heir, based on his/her own professional preferences and on a rational assessment of the economic perspectives of the holding.