Occupations Chosen by the Sons of Farmers

The Government aims to reduce the number of farmers in this country by encouraging some existing operators to retire. This paper explores an alternative possibility, namely, that of influencing potential new entrants, the majority of whom are farmers' sons. For a number of reasons, sons of existing farmers may find it easier, on leaving school, to stay in agricirlture than to enter other occupations. Later realisation by many of them of the economic prospects and subsequent moves to other jobs represent a waste of human resources to the whole economy as well as causing social hardship to the individual. A recent survey of the occupational choice process of rural schoolboys and students aimed to discover the obstacles, if any, to greater outward mobility. Farmers' sons were compared with others in respect of educational and occupational aspirations, alternative jobs considered, sources of career advice and work values. Some ways are suggested whereby sons whose fathers have farms which are too small to provide a living might be made aware of their own prospects in farming, the range of opportunities open to them and the satisfactions to be gained in other occupations before they commit themselves to an unrewarding strirggle in farming.