diff --git a/src/guc.c b/src/guc.c
index 9b789bce8f8..a8b3bb8cdf8 100644
--- a/src/guc.c
+++ b/src/guc.c
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ bool ts_guc_enable_async_append = true;
 bool ts_guc_enable_chunkwise_aggregation = true;
 TSDLLEXPORT bool ts_guc_enable_compression_indexscan = true;
 TSDLLEXPORT bool ts_guc_enable_bulk_decompression = true;
-TSDLLEXPORT int ts_guc_bgw_log_level;
+TSDLLEXPORT int ts_guc_bgw_log_level = log_min_messages;
 TSDLLEXPORT bool ts_guc_enable_skip_scan = true;
 /* default value of ts_guc_max_open_chunks_per_insert and ts_guc_max_cached_chunks_per_hypertable
  * will be set as their respective boot-value when the GUC mechanism starts up */