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Decent Rural Employment

Module 3: Youth employment
This module aims to assist policymakers, planners and practitioners to advocate for and directly promote more and better job opportunities for young women and men in agrifood systems.

Promote decent employment for youth in agriculture and food systems

Young women and men are the present and future of global food and nutrition security. Yet, around the world, few young people see opportunities for growth in rural areas and the agriculture sector. While youth employment is high on the global policy agenda, many countries struggle to identify adequate solutions to encourage and facilitate youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems and to define national budget allocations.

To begin with, this module provides an overview of the main challenges faced by young people in agriculture and rural areas and FAO's approach to improve decent employment prospects for rural youth. It then brings together materials to guide policymakers and development practitioners in identifying adequate solutions with potential for scaling up.

While the world's youth population is expected to grow, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth – particularly those living in economically stagnant rural areas of developing countries – remain limited, underpaid and of poor quality. There are six main challenges which negatively impact the employment prospects of the rural youth in the agriculture sector. These have been identified through  surveys and global fora (see FAO, CTA and IFAD, 2014):

  • Youth's insufficient access to knowledge, information and education, which limits their productivity and the acquisition of skills.
  • Youth's limited access to land, due to the lack of resources to acquire or lease it, or inheritance laws and customs which make the transfer of land to young women problematic.
  • Inadequate access to financial services, as most financial service providers are reluctant to offer their services to youth due to their frequent lack of collateral and financial literacy.
  • Difficult access for young people to green jobs, due to their lack of skills to obtain new jobs in the green economy (e.g. energy production from renewable sources) or to participate in the "greening" of existing jobs (e.g. environmentally friendly food production such as organic farming, composting and agroforestry).
  • Young people's limited access to markets, which is becoming even more difficult given the growing international influence of supermarkets and the rigorous standards of their supply chains. This restricted access to markets is also due to the limited inclusion of youth in the private sector. Additionally, young women in developing countries face further constraints in accessing markets and this is partially due to their freedom of movement often being limited by cultural norms.
  • Youth's limited inclusion in social and policy dialogue, since too often young people’s representatives are not invited to countries' policy processes, and consequently their complex and multifaceted needs are not met.

Addressing these six principal challenges is key to increasing the inclusion and involvement of youth in agrifood systems. Ultimately addressing the significant untapped potential of this sizeable and growing demographic divide is essential. In developing countries in particular, facilitating the participation of the youth cohort in the agrifood sector has the potential to drive widespread rural poverty reduction among youth and adults alike while rejuvenating an aging sector.

FAO adopts an integrated approach to enhancing youth's access to decent employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. The approach is structured along four main components:

  • Changing the discourse. FAO raises awareness on the employment needs and potential of rural youth, thus supporting more informed policy decisions. This includes generating knowledge and advocating for the prioritization of youth and their employment prospects in agricultural and rural development. At the same time, FAO provides governments with guidance and examples of approaches that work, in order to translate commitment into policy change.
  • Strengthening the capacities of national partners. While governments may recognize the transformative potential of decent work, many lack the technical capacities to effectively promote decent employment for young people in agriculture. FAO strengthens the capacities of partners in the ministries of agriculture (livestock, fisheries, and forestry), youth, labour and other relevant ministries to design, implement and monitor youth-enhancing agricultural policies, strategies, programmes and investment plans. In addition to governments, FAO directly supports and partners with producer and worker organizations, other private partners, civil society and national research institutions to strengthen their capacities to bring youth priorities in the strategic planning of agricultural development.
  • Empowering young women and men. All FAO approaches, tools and methodologies aim to empower young women and men to be active drivers of change and actively participate in social and policy dialogue. Usually, FAO pilots youth-enhancing initiatives in the field, and supports governments to scale up successful approaches. For instance, FAO's gender- and age-friendly methodology established in over 20 countries to date promotes not only youth participation and skills/entrepreneurship development, but also social capital through producer (youth) organizations and collective action. The Junior Farmer Field and Life School (JFFLS) methodology enhances participants’ agricultural, life and entrepreneurial skills through various topics. The young trainees then tend to return to their communities, where they cost-effectively retrain their young peers and raise awareness on the topics learned. More recently, with the objective of increasing its contribution to system change, FAO is exploring a market system development lens in some of its field projects. This means that the Organization works closely with market players in selected value chains to improve market functions and create an enabling environment to generate more and better jobs for the rural youth.
  • Developing partnerships. FAO's approach builds on the establishment of strong partnerships at global, regional and country levels. At the global level, FAO partners with other UN organizations under the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development, which provides a corporate framework for more coherent and effective support through joint initiatives. FAO is also involved in the global initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth and leads the thematic window on youth in the rural economy. At the regional level, FAO partners with institutions and programmes – such as the Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in Latin America and the Caribbean; the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) / NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA) and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in Africa – to influence regional agricultural and rural development processes and facilitate  knowledge sharing and good practices. At the country level, FAO partners with the private sector, producer organizations, governments, and youth organizations, to guarantee better employment prospects for young people.


Resources

The following links are to publications on decent youth employment in rural areas at the global regional levels. They include global reports, information notes on FAO’s work in this field, articles, as well as a collection of practical solutions for youth engagement in agriculture.

Among the guidance tools listed below are materials on how to run a JFFLS, including more than 15 specific modules for JFFLS trainers and a monitoring and evaluation toolkit. Another tool provides a detailed example of a private and public sector partnership model for decent youth employment in agriculture.

Case studies and lessons learned:

Videos on good practices: 

Infographics:

Websites:

Further learning: 


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