المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

For developing countries with high unemployment rates and low incomes, it is very important to keep young people in rural areas, a very challenging task to cope with. Wider opportunities for employment and higher salaries in urban areas drive rural to urban migration rates, leaving no youth involved in food production and creating food security issues.

This situation perfectly describes the case of Armenia, where young people do not want to be engaged in agriculture-related jobs, because they do not see high payoff possibilities in the agriculture. Armenian National Agriculture University had conducted a survey of graduates in 2015, and the result show that although about 60% of students come from the regions of the country, only 13 % of male and 9% of female students prefer to work in agriculture related fields (agribusiness, veterinary, agronomy). This tendency had already led to the situation, when for finding good agronomy specialists, greenhouse management has to contract European specialists or winemaking plants have to employ experts from Argentina or France. Needless to say this is very costly, and the businesses would prefer to have local specialists, if education system was capable of training those.

The most effective and cost-saving approach in the given situation is improving education via targeted vocational programs in the given narrow field with heavy emphasis on internships and on-the-field trainings supported by agribusiness companies. The examples of EVN wine academy and the Agribusiness Teaching Center in Armenia prove that the industry-academia collaboration leads to the best results. EVN wine academy is an 18 month wine specialists and winemakers vocational training program where the in-class education (that heavily involves industry professionals and best international expertise) is complemented with lab tests, field work during vine pruning season, and internships during grape collection and procurement season. This approach leads to the fact that all students are being employed prior to graduation and get salaries about 2-3 times higher than the industry average.

Similar programs can be held in any field of specialization (ex. agronomy, plant growing, veterinary e.t.c) during high school years in rural areas. One subject on a field of interest (let’s say in Agronomy) can be added to high school curriculum. Schools in villages usually have plot of land around the school that can be utilized for practice trainings and each student will have own plants to take care of. The cost of this project is one-time teacher training and a salary for one additional class to be paid to the teacher (20 USD per month). In this case by the age of 17-18 when they graduate from the school, the young people will have a skill that together with the available resource– family land, will provide profitable employment, hence keeping the youth in rural areas and contributing to food security.