New research reveals that age, more than any other factor including farm type, size, tenure, or location, is the defining factor in what is motivating UK farmers. The implications for anyone trying to design policy, training, or communications for British farming deserve serious attention.
The picture painted by eighteen months of collecting data on What Keeps Farmers Awake at night was, frankly, a gloomy one. Very useful data but posed the question – why on earth do farmers keep doing it?
What drives them. What, on a grey February morning with mounting pressures of the weather, political unrest, input costs, labour shortages and mental stress is still driving them forwards?
Over 500 farmers from the Five Bar Gate community, a panel of more than 2,500 UK farmers built and maintained by Grounded Research, took part in summer 2026. The team could cut the findings by farm size, gender, location, tenure, and age. Most of those cuts produced interesting patterns. One produced a result so clear that it re-framed everything else.
We found something interesting…
Age is the single biggest factor influencing what motivates farmers to keep farming.
Not whether you own your land or rent it. Not whether you farm 50 acres or 5,000. Not if you have arable or livestock. Not whether you’re in Norfolk or Northumberland.
How old you are shapes your relationship with farming more profoundly than almost anything else, and the industry, largely, hasn’t caught up with that.
The under-35s: idealists with their sleeves rolled up (12% of the sample)
The youngest cohort – 18 to 34 – are, relatively speaking, in good shape. They carry fewer financial pressures than their older counterparts, or at least fewer that feel immovable, and their motivations are expansive. They want to help society. They want to look after animals.
They’re energised by purpose that extends beyond the farm gate. It’s tempting to call them naïve, but that would be wrong. What they have is the psychological luxury of not yet being ground down. Their worries, where they exist, tend to be practical and solvable. Their motivations are outward-facing, connected to something bigger than the next harvest or the next inspection.
“Working in an industry where you can take control of your own destiny and align it with your values, such as high-welfare, environmentally sustainable livestock farming.” Organic Dairy Farmer, South East England, Age 18-24.
This is the generation that responds to mission. Tell them that what they do feeds the nation, protects biodiversity, shapes rural communities, and they believe it, because for them it’s still true in an unconditional sense. If you’re a levy body, an assurance scheme, an agricultural college, or a charity trying to bring people into the industry, this is your audience. They’re ready to hear it.
” A chance to nourish people, build resilient biodiverse ecosystems and connect communities” Sheep Farmer, South West England, Age 25-34
The 35–44s: building something, and noticing the cracks (25% of the sample)
By their mid-thirties to mid-forties, priorities have shifted. The 35–44 cohort are motivated predominantly by improvement this looks like learning, developing, doing things better. They’re thinking about their local community, about what farming means in a social and environmental context. They’re still forward-looking, but with a sharper lens.
They’re also the group most likely to be taking on responsibility in building a business, taking over from a parent, navigating the increasingly complex policy environment of post-Brexit agriculture. The curiosity is still there, but it’s being tested.
“We have children who are showing in interest in farming. I want this to be an industry that there is a future in for them if that’s what they want to do” Tenant Farmer, Arable, East Midlands age 35-44.
For anyone in the business of farmer education, training, or professional development, this cohort is the sweet spot. They want to learn, practically, not theoretically. They want their farming to mean something in their community. They are the people who will go to farm walks, read the research, try the new variety, take on the mentee. They just need the offer to be worth their while.
“The introduction of AI tools into agriculture really does excite me” Arable Farmer, North West, age 35-44
The 45–54s: providing, enduring, hoping (22% of the sample)
Something shifts in the 45–54 group that deserves careful attention. The primary driver of motivation becomes family, providing for them, keeping going for them. And alongside that comes a sense of being locked in: farming not as pure vocation but as life, as identity, as habit.
That’s not necessarily bleak. Identity and habit are powerful anchors. But this cohort is also characterised by hope, specifically, hope that things will get better. That word, hope, is doing a lot of work. It implies things are not currently good. It implies endurance. It implies that the motivation to continue is in part about not giving up rather than actively wanting to be here.
“I am to become a dad in August, for the first time. I would like to think that any slight improvement I can do for farming and for their farming business, should they choose to go into it, then it is worthwhile” Arable Farmer, South East England, Age 45-54
If you want to retain this generation in farming, and they are the backbone of British agriculture, the ones running most of the land, according to the stats, then messaging about the future has to be credible. They’ve heard the optimism before. They’ve weathered multiple policy U-turns, the never-ending price swings, the political indifference. What they need isn’t cheerleading. It’s evidence. Concrete, specific evidence that better days are actually coming.
Hope that eventually farmers will be valued and appreciated, both financially and socially.” Dairy Farmer, North West England, Age 45-54
The 55-pluses: the love is real, but the tank is running low (34%of the sample)
Here the picture becomes both beautiful and troubling. Older farmers are the most likely to be motivated by nature. What matters to them is the wildlife on their land, the countryside they’ve shaped and been shaped by for decades. They express the deepest pride in their farm, their name, their stewardship. In a different piece of research this would read as the payoff: the elder statespeople of British agriculture, rich in knowledge and at peace with their vocation.
But they are also the most likely to struggle to find reasons to keep going.
“It’s the strength of spirit of the people in farming that make it worthwhile, at a time when opportunity, ambition and optimism have being degraded and politically neglected like never before.” Arable Farmer, South East England, Age 55-64
That tension between profound love for the land and a motivation gap is one of the most important findings in this entire study. It suggests that for older farmers, the emotional and spiritual relationship with farming remains intact. What has eroded is the sense that the industry, the system, wider society, values them back. The love is there. The reciprocity isn’t.
This has profound implications for knowledge transfer, succession planning, and the rural mental health agenda. These are people sitting on enormous expertise and deep environmental knowledge, increasingly disengaged from the institutions that should be drawing on it.
What the industry should do with this
The broad motivation map shows something quietly encouraging. The largest slice of farmer motivation is about improving things. The second largest is about people and animals. The smallest is negative: obligation, debt, being trapped. Farmers, overall, are not a demoralised workforce clinging on by habit. Most of them, most of the time, are motivated by something real and a purpose that few of us on the outside of the industry will expereince.
But ‘most of the time’ and ‘most of them’ are doing significant statistical heavy lifting there. And the age breakdown reveals that the distribution of that motivation is uneven and predictable.
That predictability is, actually, an opportunity. If you know that your under-35 audience responds to societal purpose, design your communications around societal purpose. If you know your 35–44 cohort are driven by improvement and community, put them in rooms with other progressive farmers and let them learn from each other. If you know your 45–54s need credible hope rather than hollow optimism, give them the evidence base, not the glossy brochure. If you know your 55-plus farmers are disengaging despite loving their land, create the structures; mentoring programmes, farm walks, recognition schemes, that make them feel valued again.
None of this is revolutionary. It is, essentially, the basics of audience segmentation applied to a sector that has historically communicated to ‘farmers’ as a single, undifferentiated block.
Want to talk about this more and see if there are insights that your organisation can use from What Keeps Farmers Awake at night or our new study on what is motivating them to keep going – then get in touch on hello@groundedresearch.co.uk or call 01487 822320