“My son, study hard, and do something else, don’t be a farmer, used to say my mum. But what if there were some Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Totti in agriculture, showing how successful one can be in this sector?” During a side event organized within the 45^th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), Denis Kabiito, National Coordinator of the Young Farmers’ Federation of Uganda explained that to encourage youth to engage in agriculture, its public image needs to be reshaped.

And this needs to happen quite urgently: despite the increasing demand for food worldwide, a significant percentage of farms risk being abandoned in the next few years as most youth are moving to the cities seeking their fortune, often in vain. While it is now widely recognized that 80% of the world’s food comes from family farms, not much has been done to ensure their continuity in the future.

The panel agreed that, at present, even those youth who do think agriculture is cool, find it hard to bring their ideas into reality. They can’t access land, credit, and other financial services such as insurance schemes, which limits their ability to start or invest in their existing businesses.” Yet they know that agriculture is much more than farming, they feel they would be good at adding value to their products, they dream about marketing them.

How can this dream come true? First, education. Learning on the farm should go hand in hand with going to school. And then business training is needed: understanding who the customer is, what he would like to buy, how to reach him; along with prolonged technical assistance, at least in the “incubation” period. Second, the recognition of the role of youth. Youth are normally good at technology and innovation and could, for instance, assist their families and communities in modernizing the farm and making it more efficient, if there was more intergenerational trust. Third, sharing. Exchanging experiences with youth from other communities. But, perhaps more important, allowing youth to share their perspective in adequate fora and participating in national policy-making processes.

It is not easy to have senior government officials accept policy advice from the youngsters. But with adequate policies in place, the banking system could undergo some “rejuvenation” and create ad-hoc rural financial models for youth, enterprises could engage in sustainable partnerships with youths and their organizations, and more young people would want to work in agriculture, including those who come from the cities.

The discussion moved to the importance of multi-stakeholder dialogue, engagement and actions to create the “enabling environment” for youth. The good news is that youth employment is starting to be at the top of many agendas and public investments in youth are rising. FAO has decided to prioritize youth under its rural poverty reduction strategic work and is supporting countries to transform their policies. To understand where to start from in each country, FAO, with support from the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture, has developed a Capacity Assessment Tool to assess existing and needed capacities to empower youth to engage in responsible agricultural investment, following the CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (CFS-RAI), and in particular Principle 4 “to engage and empower youth”. Janetta Carlucci from the Decent Rural Employment Team in FAO explained how this tool has been used in multi-stakeholder workshops involving 6 African countries so far and shared some results that are helping to identify national priorities. From these assessments, it came out that, in some cases, useful services for youth are already provided but are not known, thus efforts should go, for instance, at ensuring that information on what kind of services are available reaches rural communities, and also at supporting local and national networks.

At the end of the event, participants were actively sharing ideas on how to scale-up efforts. Could the recently proclaimed Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) be a platform to make agriculture attractive to youth and stimulate their inclusion in policy-making? For sure, the young speakers in the event, which included YPARD, the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development movement, had some quite clear ideas on how to do this, starting from the creation of a “Young farmers prize”. And you, would you like to share any other idea with us?

For more information:

The Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems: www.fao.org/3/a-au866e.pdf

Overview of the FAO Umbrella Programme “Supporting Responsible Investments in Agriculture and Food Systems”: www.fao.org/3/a-i6820e.pdf

E-learning course on responsible investment in agriculture and food systems: www.fao.org/elearning/#/elc/en/courses/RAI

FAO’s Corporate Strategy on Capacity Development: www.fao.org/3/a-k8908e.pdf

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

Capacity assessment tool: http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/CA2061EN/

Capacity assessment tool flyer: http://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CA1877EN

Articles on workshops using the Capacity Assessment tool in Africa:

• Côte d’Ivoire: http://www.fao.org/capacity-development/news-list/detail/en/c/1127274/;
• Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries: http://www.fao.org/capacity-development/news-list/detail/en/c/1111084/;
• Uganda: http://www.fao.org/capacity-development/news-list/detail/en/c/1099036/

Family farming decade: http://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1153984/

Contact: 

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