What makes livestock farming so hard for young people to enter — and how do we change that? WFO Gymnasium alumna Elisabeth Hidén brought her answers to an FAO webinar.

On 18 May 2026, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hosted the webinar “Let’s Talk with Youth! The Role of Livestock in Agrifood Systems and Beyond“, bringing together young professionals across the livestock sector — farmers, researchers, veterinarians, indigenous food practitioners, and policy advocates — to discuss challenges, opportunities, and the future of the sector.

Representing the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), Elisabeth Hidén, WFO Gymnasium alumna and dairy farmer from Sweden, shared her experience of managing a 450-animal farm producing over two million litres of milk annually. Asked about what keeps young people out of the sector, she named two barriers: access to capital and quality of life. Young people, especially women, often have loan applications rejected. Livestock farming also shapes the quality of life with its unrelenting demands. As a mother of two young children, Elisabeth explained: “When you have a livestock farm, you can’t just walk away, no matter how sick you are, no matter what happens to your child. They require care 24/7, every day of the year.”

On solutions, she called for the roll-out of Farm Relief Services across Europe — a model already operating in Finland and France, where farmers get up to 25 days of substitute cover at no cost. She also urged better profitability and less administrative burden. Based on her experience, farms face up to five overlapping inspections each year, which take time and create significant pressure. She also called for a fundamental shift in how society perceives the sector: “I can see that we are actually one of the solutions and not the problem,” she said, directly addressing the narrative that casts livestock farming as a climate liability.

The panel included diverse voices from the global livestock landscape: an indigenous food practitioner from the Ojibwe community in Minnesota, a veterinary researcher from Bangladesh, a natural resource economist working with pastoralist communities in East Africa, and two youth policy advocates connected to FAO’s Youth Assembly and World Food Forum Youth Policy Board. Together, they highlighted a consistent thread across different contexts: intergenerational transfer, land access, and the need for youth to have real policy influence, not just token participation.

The webinar was the third in a series organised by FAO to introduce the upcoming publications from the Global Assessment of the Contribution of Livestock to Food Security, Sustainable Agrifood Systems, Nutrition and Healthy Diets. It aims to set the stage for a broader discussion on how science- and evidence-based assessments inform programmatic and policy processes.

Cover photo: Screenshot from the FAO webinar “Let’s Talk with Youth! The Role of Livestock in Agrifood Systems and Beyond”