Youth in agriculture

What’s at stake?

Young people are increasingly migrating to urban areas due to a lack of attractive employment opportunities, services, and facilities in rural areas. Their parents tell them to avoid a heavy job in agriculture, and those who do see themselves as a farmer do not find it easy to obtain land to develop their own activities. Either the investment is too great, or they have difficulties in being allowed to operate independently of organisations or their family. Young entrepreneurial spirits have limited access to finance to make initial investments, they have no collateral and no track record. In addition, youth representation in cooperative leadership and policy- and decision-making is often non-existent.

A recent study (Rigg et al. 2019) points out that the average age of farmers in Asian countries is 50 or older. This issue of aging farmers is exacerbated by the fact that there are not enough youth replacing them because many migrate in search of better lives, employment and educational opportunities. Young people no longer aspire to be farmers because such work is typically associated with limited opportunities, little prestige, lack of independence and low returns. The decline of the share of young people working in agriculture is also explained by the increasing difficulties they face, such as insecure farming livelihoods, land resources, decreasing environmental services, all of which limit the opportunities for young people to develop farming activities (Mortensen, 2018).

The increased migration to urban areas also poses new challenges for cities, as it drives up urban food demand. How can we tackle both these challenges that are so closely interlinked? How can we, as a society, harness the potential of young farmers and food entrepreneurs?

For Rikolto, investing in young people means investing in the future of our food systems: they are powerful leaders of change who can transform our food systems, bringing in innovation and fresh ideas.

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Our approach

The participation of young people (which we define as aged 18-35) is a cross-cutting issue in our global programme strategies: sustainable production, inclusive markets and enabling environments.

First, at the level of sustainable production, we look beyond farms to whole food systems, in the search for meaningful employment opportunities for young people. We create opportunities in rural areas for young women and men and empower them to revitalise value chains and food systems through innovation. These opportunities can range from production to processing, marketing and quality checking to creating their own start-ups. We also support farmer organisations to become solid business partners and to implement future-proof, sustainable practices. This includes increasing youth participation in their membership base and governance systems.  

Second, we work towards inclusive markets with space for young entrepreneurs. Rikolto sets up food incubators in cities across the globe, where rural and urban young people find the tools to kick-start their business ideas to make local urban food systems more sustainable. In rural areas, we support young entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses, delivering services to farmers. 

Third, we strive for an enabling environment addressing the challenges with which young people working in agri-food are confronted. We bring together universities, farmers’ organisations, NGOs, companies, and governments to join forces to create new opportunities for young people. We are well positioned to contribute to the development of this enabling environment, because of our networks in rural areas, our links with cities and actors of the food system, including decision makers.  

Of course, none of this means bypassing older generations of farmers and entrepreneurs, but rather facilitating intergenerational collaboration.

Indonesia

We trained 50 young people from Polewali Mandar District in digital farming basics/the Internet of Things (IoT) & digital marketing, as part of an ASEAN Foundation and Maybank Foundation funded project. Meanwhile, they developed a digital marketing platform for cocoa beans, 4 prototypes (e.g. at emperature sensor for fermentation units) and 3 cocoa-based products (2single-origin cocoa bars and one cocoa-ginger drink powder).

We have also been supporting our partner cooperative APOB to host organic youth camps, to open young people’s eyes about the potential of working in the rice sector. They might not always envisage a career in traditional rice production, but are attracted by the possibility of exploring newly designed irrigation schemes, developing apps for recordkeeping and farm management, etc.

In the Polewali Mandar Regency of West Sulawesi Province, Rikolto sought to spark young people's interest in agriculture through digital-based farming and agripreneurship. We held knowledge cafes with ASEAN youth volunteers and conducted Internet of Things(IoT) workshops that reached 50 young farmers, of which 20 were women. The young farmers successfully developed four prototypes of digital technologies to improve cocoa processing, including the main monitor that displays outdoor temperature and humidity, a temperature sensor for the fermentation house, a drying house sensor, and relay control.