Event Date: Sep 15, 2016
Time: 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM (GMT -5)
Location: United States
Online: Online Event
Event Links:
Information
This online chat will take place at the bottom of this page. Get a jump on the conversation and share a question or comment now.
Youth hold the future of the global agro-food system in their hands, but many young people in developing countries do not see agriculture as an attractive or viable career choice. How can we better engage youth and support their livelihoods as we plan future agricultural development projects?
Join our upcoming Ask Ag online chat on Sept. 15 from 12-1 p.m. EDT, where Agrilinks community members will dig into youth and employment. For one hour, experts will answer your questions and discuss new research, discoveries and findings in their own development work. It all takes place right here in our Comments section! This Ask Ag chat stems from a recent Feed the Future roundtable that addressed critical topics for global food security, including youth and employment. Participants discussed why youth and employment is important to food security, how demographic differences impact unemployment and what skills are required to integrate youth in agro-food systems.
There are two ways to get a head start on the discussion:1. Post a question for our experts right now in the Comments section below, and/or return to this page on September 15 from 12-1 p.m. EDT to engage in the live discussion.
2. Check out the "Youth and Employment" roundtable summary to read some thoughts from Feed the Future stakeholders on where priorities might lie in engaging youth.
Guiding questions:
- How can we ensure that youth voices are being heard in discussions on their role in agro-food system development?
- What tools and technologies can make agro-food system jobs more attractive and profitable for youth?
- How can youth advance food security in their communities apart from working in agricultural production?
- Youth are very diverse, in terms of gender, education, stage of their life cycle, etc. How should we engage different youth demographics differently?
A look ahead: The 10th Anniversary Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit will convene influencers who create and implement innovative solutions, September 28-30, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Be a part of the leading global event for expanding youth economic opportunity.
Ask Ag Chat: Youth, Employment and a Food Secure Future
Mark Brennan, Ph.D. is the UNESCO Chair for Rural Community, Leadership, and Youth Development and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Brennan’s teaching, research, writing,... more and program development concentrates on the role of community and leadership development in the youth, community, and rural development process. In this context, much of his work has focused on community action, youth development and social justice. He is co-founder of the Global Network of UNESCO Chairs on Children, Youth and Community. Dr. Brennan has over 20 years’ experience designing, conducting, and analyzing social science research related to community and rural development. This work has involved extensive comparative research throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America. Dr. Brennan’s research and program development has been funded by a variety of government, foundation, and private sources and resulting in over 100 publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, books, and Extension publications, and over 175 presentations at professional meetings. His recent books include Theory, Practice, and Community Development (2013) and Community Leadership Development: A Compendium of Theory, Research, and Application (2013). All of his research and teaching outputs have been translated into outreach curriculum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to a wider international audience. less
Lydia Mbevi is ACDI/VOCA’s regional gender and youth advisor based in Nairobi, Kenya. In her role, Mbevi ensures that programs in Africa are benefiting both men and women, girls and boys. These programs include livelihoods and... more economic empowerment, value chain development, agribusiness, health and nutrition, emergency response and food security. She supports programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Liberia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Philippines and Kyrgyzstan. Lydia is responsible for mentoring and building the capacity of the program gender specialists and youth advisors. She is also responsible for developing context specific resources and tools, supervising gender analysis, youth analysis and development of gender strategies and youth engagement plans, as well as ensuring that gender strategies and youth engagement plans supplement local government efforts. Lydia has a master’s degree in gender and development. less
Morgan Mercer is a Gender and Youth specialist at ACDI/VOCA. In her role, she provides technical guidance to programs related to gender integration, women’s empowerment, and youth development; and guides the design and... more development of technical strategies and tools in gender and youth for the organization. Prior to ACDI/VOCA, Mercer conducted gender assessments for CARE International in Mali and Tanzania, and developed curriculum and training content on behavior change interventions for youth for AED and Danya International. She has a M.A. in Development Practice from Emory University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of South Carolina. less
Dina Karic is a Senior Advisor in Cardno’s Economic Growth group, based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). A competitiveness expert, she works on enterprise development, market facilitation and workforce development... more programs in the Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Prior to her role as a Senior Advisor, she was the Chief of Party of the USAID funded FIRMA project in BiH. The FIRMA project supported competitiveness of value chains in select sectors with the goal of increasing sales and employment, and also helped create Vocational Educational Training (VET) councils as a mechanism that allows the private sector to regularly communicate its needs. less
Gary Walker is the Senior Youth Advisor for Feed the Future in the USAID Bureau for Food Security. His job is to help Feed the Future to become more youth inclusive and to help mainstream youth across Feed the Future’s... more portfolio. He has extensive experience in development policy and programming, project design and evaluation. He has more than 40 years of experience with workforce development, education, rural livelihoods, food security and other areas. He has had long-term assignments as a COP, Senior Advisor and technical consultant in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Zambia and has carried out scores of short-term consultancies in over 30 African countries plus Haiti and a few in Asia. He is a graduate of the American University School of International Service and the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. less
Comments
These are indeed major issues and they have been examined especially by FAO and IFAD. USAID Feed the Future has also cited this issue in a number of doucments, not only land tenure but plot size. I can send you some references later today or you can check these websites for a discussion o these issues in some recent studies. The bottom line is that your remarks are absolutely right and central to the discusion of how to address barriers to greater youth participation in the sector,
These are great points about youth constraints to engagement in agriculture. I think a lot of commenters are facing similar challenges in how to address these (access to land, finance, assets, etc.).FAO, CTA, and IFAD did a study on Facilitating Access of Rural Youth to Agriculture Activities in 2011 to assess the challenges and opportunities related to increasing rural youth’s participation in the sector. The study identified six principal challenges (including land) and how these challenges could be overcome through publishing case studies specific to those constraints. One interesting finding was that many of the initiatives reported on in the study actually originated from youth themselves, indicating when environments are supportive of youth, they are able to find innovative ways to create a future for themselves. You can check out the publication here: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3947e.pdf
Hello evryone, i've seen many youths who are looking into venturing into Agriculture/Agripreneurship, the bigest challenges are:
- Funding.
- Information/Mentorship
If they can get this two im sure youths will surelly feed the future.
As for me i had to start solving the problem by starting #Farmboostfund where by youths and women groups are trained and funded 100% without asking for collateral. I think its high time we need to start acting by implementing what we have been discussing.
Yes Kristi Tabaj, kindly in the link: http://www.princelinkventures.com/index.php/using-joomla/extensions/modules/navigation-modules/breadcrumbs
Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or skype:kizitowafu7
Regards.
Hi Kizito! Check out Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation where we are specifically looking at how commercializing agricultural technologies and innovations engages youth and provides sustainable long-term solutions to accessing technologies. Often, pricing and design must be top consideration to make sure commercial technologies are attractive to smallholders including youth farmers.
Also, the AgTechXChange is specifically set up to connect potential companies, funders, investors, etc. for commercializing agricultural technologies so that smallholders, including youth, are included in local agribusinesses. Our partners are developing models that promote workforce development and productivity improvements!
I agree. We need to have youth more invovled in agribusiness. Support them to start their own business - whether it be small-scale processing (juice making, dried fruits packaged, powedered commodities) or business services providers (mechanics for irrigiation, compost makers).
You need to work closely with the entrepreneurs, providing technical advice on production, skills development, and combine this with marketing and reaching new customers. Capital is critical, in most countries agricultural finance is either unavailable, too expensive and financial institutions rarely provide capital to start-ups – so donors or government shoudl provide capital grants. You combine this with business training they need to have sound financial knowledge.
I have worked on internship programs for youth to gain practical experience. We managed to get funding from private sector, specifically from growing companies that need new workers, and we also got funding from government and donors. Our projects also provide funding, but by leveraging resources from other players are share was typically under 15%. The idea is to place interns where there is a demand for new workers - this increases their chances of being employed once the internship ends
We have also experienced the power of mentoring while working with youth as they enter these activities. In our work in the USAID LAUNCH project, we provided youth starting agro input supplies businesses with a business mentor. Youth noted that these mentors often times were the make or break of their success. They valued having an adult to coach them through challenging situations more than the start-up grants we provided.
Great points, Hillary. ACDI/VOCA was able to talk to LAUNCH program participants this summer as a part of our youth engagement in agricultural value chains study under our LEO project (http://www.acdivoca.org/projects/leveraging-economic-opportunities-leo/). We found similarly that the type of training and mentoring that MCI rolled out in Liberia gave youth a space where they can explore, have positive experiences in agriculture, and have supports in place when challenges occur (which is crucial when building youth resiliency). We'll be releasing a success story about one of LAUNCH's mentors in late September with the publication, which highlights the work Hillary and her team at MCI did, so we'd happy to share.
I think youth will become more interested in agriculture careers either as farmers or private service providers if an overlooked issue is addressed. That is the operational fieasibility of innovation designed for smallholder farmers, to make certain the farmers have the operational resources to take full advantage of innovations. This really falls into an administrative gap between the applied bio-scientists like the agronomist, and the social scientist. Please review the linked article recently distributed by The AID & INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FORUM.
http://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/OperationalFeasibility.pdf
Once this is addressed and it increase food security with marketable surplus youth will become more interested.
Are young people more likely to choose careers in the field of food production and processing if there are well-regarded degrees and certificates available? As some of the others commented, parents may discourage their children from an agricultural career. What are the different benefits of agricultural training programs for youth who did not complete primary or secondary school compared to agricultural degrees at the university level? What are the respective roles of these two types of education in supporting a dynamic and successful agricultural sector?
Interesting way to look at this The degrees help, but with a degree youth are less likely to work on the farm. In most countries where we work, farming is still subsistence farming - and incomes are low. We need to work on commercialising the ag, sector, making it more profitable and then integrating youth at all levels: helping them earn higher incomes because they are growing for high end markets, and adding layers to the value chain -processing, and business services providers - providing opportunities for off-farm employment
Julie, you bring out some interesting points here. I would agree with Dina that youth obtaining degrees are less likely to work in production (although not unheard of). I think the thing to highlight in your comment is that there are many types of youth we work with and an important differentiator is level of education and whether youth are in-school or out-of-school. Universities and vocational and technical training schools often result in different employment pathways for youth. For out-of-school youth, implementers need to have differentiated approaches, often including literacy and numeracy training.
Hi Everyone,
I am currently the Gender Equity and Youth Program Officer for WUSC in Guyana. Young people and women are faced with so many challenges in the agriculture sector. Lack of capital and access to land have posed major problems hindering the expansion of their businesses. Additionally, many young people are not too keen in the production aspect of agri. since it is seen as laborious with little returns, many prefer to work in supporting sectors, e.g., agri machinery, extension officers, etc. If this continues, then who will replenish the aging farmers? How can we ensure food security in the near future?
There is need for a multistakeholder approach to arrive at long last solutions. How can commercial banks provide financing to youths and women with limited collateral. Have Governments began to think about establishing Development Banks that can offer financing to young farmers at affordable repayment rates? Can input suppliers provide financing? These questions need to be explored and agencies providing supporting functions need to work in unity to leverage resources and develop the sector.
I am seeing one-off cases for commercial banks engaging in financing of agriculture, even youth-led agriculture. Additionally, integrating activities into work such as warehouse receipts helps build collateral. This puts banks at ease because there is less risk. I understand it is important that these one-off successes build into systemic change, but perhaps if we learn from where risk is being mitigated from banks so that they lend to smallholders then more projects can contribute in the meantime.
We're looking forward to a great discussion on youth and employment!
The chat will take place right here in the comments section, but please feel free to post questions, comments and resources ahead of the chat.
If you'd like to ask a question, but stay anonymous, you can email the Agrilinks Team at [email protected] and we'll post the question on your behalf.
See you on Thursday!
1. Trained youth lack opportunities due to "supposed" minimum experience of 5 years and above in the field of expertise. Corrupt leaders in respective developing countries offer opportunities to their friends and families regardless of skills one has.
2. International organizations operating in developing contries do offer very few opportunities for youth mentorship. In addition, on the available few opportunities there are restrictions based on the universities from developing nations that the youth are trained in.
3. Funding youth projects in Agriculture by financial institutions is minimal since the youth can not raise the collateral required for credit facilities.
We share your concerns and agree that there need to be more flexible approaches to creating opportunities for youth - the 5 year exoerience requirement is sometimes arbitrary but reflects the need for experience. USAID and others are focusing more on the need for internships, mentoring and support to oyuth-led organizations in which youth can develop skills and gain experience to empower them to meet the experiential needs of employers and gain skills for selfemployment.
Donor projects should develop internship programs but also work with Vocational and Educational schools and private sector to develop internship programs. We need more private sector extension workers, but most public systems offer little practical experience. On the other hand, input suppliers, buyers with contract -farming mechanisms are mainly staffed by traders/sellers - people that don't have agricultural experience. Donor projects should look at ways of facilitating private-public sector training/mentoring/internship programs
Agricalture Development and modernization should be interlinked with Youth Development. The majority of smallholder farmers remain small as it is, majority are old age generation, less educated, poor acess to finnace, and normally on the backyard of the world economy. Unless the the current system is changed and agricalture being moderized and elevated to high-value investment. Youth groups will never toss ther head into unprofitable, toiling all around investment, instead they shall keep navigating and venturing into high value professionalism like IT, engineering, finnace etc etc.
Youth generation in fact are in better place for climate resilient agricalture investments, and the old majority generation are not in position to deal with the current climate change challenges facing agricalture modernization to cope with the current planet challenge. Unless the world leaders understand the necessity to make agricalture as a key sector, moderize it, create new ways to ease finance acess, and attract youth with start-up funds (grants, soft loans) etc etc. The Youth group is a key generation to replenish the senior farmers who by the way are less energetic, minimum capability to catch up with high tech and other sophisicated technology tools to deal with global challenges like global warming, climate resilient agricalture etc
Youth come from different backgrounds, and when we try to find solutions we need to look at where they are in life and where they come from. It is not all about farming. We can include urban youth as entrepreneurs, as potential agribusinesses –youth ICT developers to address market information failures. But also youth in rural areas who are not interesting in farming can become agri-business entrepreneurs. Isn't the point to commercialise these sectors, and as we do other opportunities will arise.
I will speak as an interested youth in Agri-preneurship. I say, we the youth we have the interest in Agriculture, some of us have the skills and capable of producing good results in agricultural production. But oops! Limited support from the government and NGOs is a big problem. We don't have the money or very little to support us to use right technologies. Hence we are just used by the elderly to enrich them. Its painful that we are not recognized as actors in development, where our voice isn't heard. Build us, support us for a brighter future because we are the seed.
Hi everyone! I’m looking forward to this chat tomorrow. I work at ACDI/VOCA and am involved in youth engagement in agricultural value chains and market systems. There have been a lot of great comments and questions already and I'm looking forward to discussing more tomorrow. I noticed a lot of you have focused on the challenges youth face (of which there are many), and I'm looking forward to hearing how you as an implementer, donor, or youth engaged in agriculture have seen these challenges circumvented. I have a few ideas, but would love to hear from you as well!
This is a good topic which I am passionate about having worked with Youth in Agriculture. We are aware that the 3 challenges facing youth in agriculture include - land Financing and information. These have been discussed in many forums. The word "attractive" 'sexy" "cool" have been used in the effort to
We are all aware of the 3 main challenges facing youth in agriculture; Land Financing and Relevant information. These have been discussed in many forums. The word "attractive" 'sexy" "cool" have been used in the effort to engage youth in agriculture but the best word to me would be "identifying opportunities".
The unfortunate thing is that when we have these forums/summit/conferences for youth in agriculture we rarely have hands-on speakers who are farmers. The 'knowledge brokers" always take that advantages to discuss continuously in that 'vicious' cycle on behalf of the youth. If there are youth in such meeting they will be manning exhibition booths.
QUESTIONS: Why can we have a forum where we would discuss some of the success that
1. Why can we have a forum where we would discuss some of the success that have engaged youth in agriculture and identify ways of upscaling them for a wider coverage and impact?
2. Document/Literature on youth and agriculture tend to be mainly reports from donor funded project which most of the time are subjective. Why are there few empirical independent studies on youth and agriculture that can give credible information on the issues on youth and agriculture?
A new IFAD-UNESCO publication just out this month 'Learning Knowledge and Skills for Agriculture to Improve Rural Livelihoods', written by Dr Anna Robinson-Pant. It offers rich insights into what and how young people learn in rural areas, especially girls and women, which is key for creating inclusive sustainable societies. (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002457/245765E.pdf)
Hi Joseph ... these are good points. As for the literature, donor organizations do generate a large amount of the analysis and not all of it is perfect. However, most are well footnoted allowing you to go back to original sources to understand the bases for conclusions. Specifically, I would recommend the FAO and IFAD websites that have case studies of activities that have worked to beenfit youth. The recent IFAD assessment of its own projects provides interesting documentation on what worked and why. Also, have a look at the Nairobi-based Agricuture Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Status of Youth 2015 report that offers a solid set of data and lots of African input. Farmers often offer input through Focus Group Discussions in the field since access of technology at the rural farm level and language is also often a barrier.
For areas with high rural-urban youth migration rates, many of these children still have very strong ties to the rural communities they left. Can we maybe spend sometime specficially discussing ways in which we could harness their potential to advance food security in ways that could help them stay connected to their rural roots (should they wish to)?
Fantastic comment. I agree completely. If we are to empower youth in urban settings and understand their issues/behaviors, it's vital that we realize many/most have rural roots.
We also need to think about ways to build on their unique skills and backgrounds.
Interesting report on the importance of lifelong learning and youth.
Lifelong learning for young men and women
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/pdf/IFAD-UIL-presentation.pdf
It’s important that we promote youth entrepreneurship and education so that youth can create opportunities based on their unique skills, cultures, contexts, andgeographic setting.
Interesting points Maraki as migration is a hot topic issue in youth development work. From an economic perspective, it would be interesting to look at remittances going back to rural areas from urban or regional hubs and that contribution to food security. For example, in Nepal, last year remittances through formal channels reached $6.7 billion (32.2% of GDP). There's also examples of young people who have worked abroad and have now returned to rural areas with new experiences, capacities, and skills that may be transferrable to agriculture. Engaging these youth will be critical in many contexts. Lastly, migration can also be heavily gendered, resulting in, for example, increased workloads of women in communities with high levels of male outmigration. If anyone has great examples from their own project work or research exploring these themes, I'd love to take a look.
Hello everyone, I’m kizito Wafula from Nairobi Kenya I’m an Agripreneur. I have one concern that really disturbs me. I’ve been involved in so many discussions in the past, but after the discussion nothing seems to happen. What are we going to do so that we can implement what we discuss here? To the organizers thanks for this great event/platform, but what do we expect after the discussion? Because people are suffering out here, majority are waiting for people like us to discuss and come up with solutions.
http://www.princelinkventures.com/index.php/using-joomla/extensions/modu...
Regards.
I think it is up to use to take what we learned and integrate it into our own work! For example, I will read many of the resources people shared and see where my work can be improved to reach more youth. These types of discussions challenge us, as development practitioners, to do better!
Developing countries’ youth are very much interested in agriculture but no one has ever looked at the following barriers that I will highlight. We have all along been asking the wrong questions. We have not given the youth the chance to fully articulate their frustrations with the traditional agricultural system.
The answer is land scarcity and reduced soil fertility. Much of the land has been parceled out to many generations to such an extent that the younger generation has small plots that will not produce anything commercial except for subsistence. Related to this is the loss in fertility of the land, people farm on the same plots over and over instead of leaving land fallow, land loses nutrients and fertility and the return on investment is low and unsustainable. One cannot expect youth to be in agriculture under such circumstances.
Something complex and never mentioned is the traditional land tenure system. In most cultures you do not get land until you are married, some cultures you get land when you have kids. These days rural youth pursue education, delay marriage and want to earn their own income before they get married, they want to have savings before they marry. Since most are young and single but it is their parents who decide what is grown and how the income is spent. The youth do not have land of their own to make these decisions, they work for their parents yet they want the independence to make their own financial decisions. The only time you are allowed to move out of your parent’s household and be on your own is when you marry or you have kids, usually you find many young married people still under the control of their parents until they graduate to be their own “family”, this is when land is parceled out for you. As a young person when you are still living with your parents you have no control over anything (land, income or any decisions related to agriculture) because to them you are still a “child”. The only escape to earn their own income is to work outside agriculture and mainly this means leaving for the urban areas and try something else where your parents do not have control over you.
Besides some parents are discouraging their kids to get into farming, they want their kids to “live better than they did”, they drill this into your head from an early age, only that one kid not doing well in school would be expected to do the farming when they grow up, everyone else should earn a salary to make your parents proud.
It is not the youth that are not attracted to agriculture it is;
the age and marriage based traditional land tenure system that deprives young able bodied youth of land to earn a living,
parental influence and pressure on what is desirable form of work and what practically supports upward social mobility.