The book is based on the multi-country collaborative research project Becoming a Young Farmer: Young People’s Pathways into Farming in Four Countries (2017-2021). The four countries are: Canada, China, India, and Indonesia. It responds directly and concretely to concerns about the generational sustainability of smallholder farming worldwide– reflected in the current UN Decade of Family Farming. Most current research and literature center on why young people leave farming. The book draws on research that instead asks: “Given the constraints they face, how do (some) young people continue to pursue a (future) livelihood in farming?’ The book uses the life-course perspective and privileges voices of young women and men farmers to show that movement away from farming such as time spent in education, migration and non-farm work do not exclude eventual farming futures. Analysing young people’s diverse pathways of becoming a farmer illuminates the constraints they face, and their efforts to overcome them. The future shape of rural communities, and of the world’s agriculture, will depend to a large extent on these and future generations of young people, their interest in and ability to acquire the needed resources for farming careers and livelihoods.weiterlesen