Creating an Age-Friendly Environment in Farming The Farmers Yards Approach

With demographic trends highlighting an inversion of the farming community age pyramid, withthose aged 65 years and over constituting the fastest growing subgroup of the farming popula-tion globally, this article highlights a social initiative for older farmers called Farmers Yards,embodying values, and aspirations pertinent to farmers in their later years, that is helping tocreate an age-friendly environment in farming in line with World Health Organisation (WHO)guidelines. By providing older farmers with a platform for sustained social engagement andinclusion within the farming community, this social initiative aligns with principles promotingactive and healthy aging, thereby contributing positively to their mental health and wellbeing inlater life. In doing so, Farmers Yards is helping to address recent calls by the EuropeanCommission for an increased emphasis on the delivery of creative mechanisms that enhancethe quality of life of older farmers through social policy. The pilot phase of this social initiativeoutlined in this article, held in a Livestock Mart (Auction Market) setting in the west of Ireland,demonstrates how Farmers Yards can strengthen Marts long-standing position and reputation ascentres of social activity within rural areas by helping older farmers maintain legitimate socialconnectedness, collegiality, and comradeship with their peers in advancing age in their respectiveregions, and in turn, combat social isolation and loneliness in later life. Recommendations for future research and on the expansion of Farmers Yards are subsequently outlined.