Generational renewal and sustainability pathways: Exploring diversification and resilience in agricultural systems

Agricultural systems in the European Union face simultaneous pressures from demographic decline, economic fragility, and biodiversity loss. The shrinking share of young farmers raises concerns about the long-term viability of rural areas, while monoculture and production intensification continue to erode crop diversity and ecosystem resilience. Although generational renewal policies aim to address demographic challenges, their potential to intersect with environmental or resilience-related dimensions remains insufficiently explored, particularly in structurally constrained agricultural contexts such as Greece. This study investigates how the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Young Farmers Measure, designed primarily to support generational renewal, relates to crop diversification and resilience-related characteristics among young farmers. The analysis addresses three questions: whether young farmers who intend to remain in agriculture beyond the mandatory support period exhibit different diversification trajectories; whether distinct socio-economic and agronomic profiles are associated with heterogeneous diversification behaviours; and how resilience-related attributes vary across diversification levels and across the farmer profiles identified through clustering. Farm level and socio-economic data from young farmers in Greece were used to quantify crop diversification through a standardized Crop Diversification Index (CDI). K-means clustering was applied to identify heterogeneous farmer profiles based on structural, socio-economic, and diversification characteristics. A multidimensional Young Farmers Resilience Index (YFRI) was constructed using Min–Max normalization across ten economic, social, and environmental indicators, providing a composite description of resilience-related attributes. The methodological approach is descriptive and exploratory, focusing on variation within the beneficiary population rather than on causal inference. Young farmers intending to remain in agriculture beyond the mandatory support period displayed higher and more variable CDI values than non-continuing farmers, indicating distinct diversification trajectories associated with long-term engagement. The cluster analysis revealed three structurally and behaviourally differentiated farmer profiles, each exhibiting characteristic diversification patterns shaped by farm size, production orientation, and household composition. YFRI scores also varied across clusters, reflecting the interaction of structural capacity, socio-economic conditions, and diversification profiles. These findings highlight substantial heterogeneity within the beneficiary population and illustrate how generational-renewal policies intersect with diversification and resilience-related attributes under the structural conditions of Greek agriculture. The study provides a replicable framework for examining how socio-economic context measures within the CAP relate to environmental and resilience-relevant characteristics. By demonstrating the diversity of pathways through which young farmers combine structural conditions, behavioural orientations, and crop portfolios, the findings support more integrated policy design capable of jointly addressing demographic, environmental, and structural challenges. • Generational renewal, biodiversity and social resilience challenge agricultural systems. • Young farmers with long-term engagement intentions exhibit higher diversification levels. • Young farmers' socio-economic and agronomic profiles co-shape diversification. • Generational renewal policy should be linked with environmental and resilience dimensions.