The scheme of special pensions for farmers ended at the end of 2018. New benefits under this scheme are no longer granted. The already granted aids will continue unchanged. The farmer’s early retirement aid was based on a provisional act. The last Act on the Farmer’s Early Retirement Aid was valid from 2015 to 2018 .

The farmers’ early retirement aid was granted to a farmer who gave up agriculture or forestry or a reindeer herder who gave up reindeer husbandry before reaching the retirement age. It was not a benefit of the earnings-related pension scheme although it was determined based on the insured earnings in the earnings-related pension scheme. It was a form of agricultural assistance, a special pension, which was totally financed by public funds.

The farmers’ early retirement aid was determined like the earnings-related and the national pension. The basic amount of the farmers’ early retirement aid was the same as the disability pension that would have been payable to the farmer on their income based on the Farmers’ Pensions Act if they had become disabled at the time of giving up farming.  The supplementary component amounts to the national pension that the farmer would have been granted at the time of giving up farming if he or she had had the right to a national pension awarded in the form of a disability pension. In 2018, the starting farmers’ early retirement aid amounted to an average of 1,100 euros/month.

In 2018, roughly 200 insured farmers retired on this special pension for farmers. By the end of 2018, a total of 10,700 pensioners got a special farmers’ pension. The number of recipients of a special farmers’ pension is declining due to a decline in the number of farmers. The number of recipients of the special farmers’ pension was at its highest in the early 1990s.

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