المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Range and Scope: Sustained Youth Engagement in Food Systems

The purpose of this comment is to identify the constraints on sustained youth involvement in agricultural pursuits and to suggest some ways of resolving this problem. In order to successfully achieve this goal, the discussion will be placed in its context in a holistic manner. This entails looking at ensuring adequate and varied nutrition of the people as an integral part of general development placing emphasis on the part youth will have to play in it.

The Contextual Framework:

In a holistic comment on the current issue, it is essential to emphasise that agriculture in its broadest sense is a logically inseparable part of every human food system. This is an epistemologically justifiable fact, and as such, it is not open to any arbitrary separation of that sub-system from the rest of a food system. That would be analogous to talking about the anatomy of man confining oneself only to that of his torso. I assume what is intended here is the engagement of youth in their food systems with greater emphasis on their participation in the food production/harvesting sub-systems.

By and large, the justification given for an intensive promotion of youth involvement in food systems seems to be sound. However, one of those reasons clearly indicates a basic flaw in the current approach, viz., it is reactive instead of being a holistic pro-active one required to resolve a grave problem we already face. First, according to FAO ca. 2 billion people are ill nourished today while we await 2 billion more mouths largely in the poorer social groups. It is here one need to speak out forcefully; no species however technically ‘advanced’ can expect to survive and maintain an acceptable quality of life unless its population is in equilibrium with those of other species and the finite resources on this planet. Let us openly advocate birth control as a vital necessity for survival and make it an integral part of any and every endeavour. Food production or any other meaningful profession cannot accommodate unlimited current population growth.

Lest I were to be accused of diverting from the main issue, let me point out much theoretical and some practical work is done to alleviate the adverse effects of soil pollution, erosion, and bio-diversity, increasing the bio-diversity among food species, climate-friendly agriculture etc. All these essential tasks are needed to enhance the availability of eco-system services, and equilibrium among the living species is an essential component of this effort. Population balance among species is the quantitative dimension of that equilibrium while bio-diversity is its qualitative element.

In passing, let me point out that the success of each and every ‘development endeavour totally depends on the equilibrium mentioned above. It has two components; first the equilibrium between the available mineral resources and the living. Natural physio-chemical phenomena, Death and dissolution in several forms return those minerals back into the environment, while balanced reproduction enables the process to continue. This state of equilibrium depends on the balance among the living species, which has a qualitative and quantitative dimension. The former refers to bio-diversity while the latter indicates the sustainable population of each species. Unless one attributes human ontogeny to some action of a super-natural entity, there is no way to exempt man from this iron rule. Please note one can always delude oneself with the fiction of science opening the way to ‘unlimited’ energy, resources, etc. The current economy based notions of development are simply based on some form of ad hoc social Darwinism, which no more sound than the variants of Marxism; both represent humans as objects without any possibility of having a free will.

A last general point: Have we every paused to ask ourselves what specifically we mean by ‘development’? Very often, income is paraded as the indicator, and several cities in developing countries are described as ‘economic miracles’. Has anyone ever taken a walk around the million-dweller slums that surround those miracles? They constitute poor villagers that flooded those miracle cities as unskilled labour whose employment is always temporary. ILO ought to see how little was paid to those workers who built many such economic miracles.

Reverting to food systems, this question assumes an even greater cogency. Nobody will dispute that what we want to achieve is the possibility of enabling the people to procure and consume a wholesome, varied and a balanced diet. At this point, an often ignored fact comes into the fore, i.e., nearly all human cultures have developed their own culinary tradition over centuries if not millennia, and even some animals seem to show food preferences. Such food cultures are considered to be social good or a valued cultural heritage. Possibility of the dietary pleasure and appreciation this food culture enables the people to enjoy has always been a significant contributor to man’s quality of life.

Therefore, when we suggest what kind of food the youth should be instrumental in producing through agricultural pursuits or making available to people by joining other sub-systems of a food system, it is imperative that their work does not diminish the dietary enjoyment of the society involved. We have absolutely no right to deprive the present and coming generations of the culinary pleasures their predecessors could have experienced by offering them some insipid, high-yield ersatz products based on algae or some fungus. This is not to suggest we all should be able to dine like Louis XIV while getting full of years and gout, nor yet like some less equal comrade waiting in a long queue to buy a loaf of black bread rich in wood fibre.

It would be clear by now that this preamble provides us a general context applicable to every type of development work and some specific to agricultural pursuits.

Criteria of Success:

• Birth control is essential for the success and sustainability of every development endeavour.
• Every effort should be undertaken to enhance the eco-systems services and strictly control the exploitation of minerals. The former requires active steps to increase world-wide bio-diversity and the appropriate increases in species population except that of the humans while the second calls for accelerated re-cycling of a large number of items.
• Actions to minimise the ill-effects of climate change including various ‘green’ projects and limiting Carbon dioxide emission, etc., are sub-categories of the two contextual elements given above.
• Action to prevent and remedy soil pollution, erosion, the depletion of its flora and fauna and rehabilitation of the pollinator population, etc., constitute an element in enhancing our eco-systems services. 
• It is important to emphasise the contribution dietary enjoyment makes to one’s quality of life. We are not yet machines to be fuelled by ‘balanced diets’ synthesised in a laboratory. Food culture of a society enables it to experience this pleasure; moreover, it also points to animals and plants best suited for the purpose within a given area. This knowledge derives from centuries of trial and error, and should not be ignored as shown by the Aral Sea disaster.
• It is true that the coming generations could be conditioned to consume ersatz novel food by inducing their guardians to feed them that from their infancy. Guardians can be induced to do so by conditioning their minds to believe in the ‘infallibility’ and the ‘quality’ of science. Compare this with the propaganda of the soviet and Nazi regimes. While they were harsh and brutal, the modern ‘science news’ and advertisements achieve the same result through more subtle techniques. Let us look at the forest rather than be infatuated by a bush or a tree in it.
• People’s ability to procure a wholesome, varied and a balanced diet depends on its sustained availability and affordability. Even among the farmers and fishermen these two requirements are only partially met. While affordability is critical, ‘accessibility’ is mere rhetoric, a sad attempt to please some vested interest at the expense of the hungry.
• We will not recap the relevance of the aging workers engaged in agricultural pursuits, depopulation of farms throughout the globe, migration of youth into city slums and their undesirable consequences.
• Therefore, it is justifiable to propose that our current endeavour should be directed at the following set of logically inseparable ends:

The Goals:

1. A significant increase in the number of youth entering into appropriate sub-system of their own food system with the emphasis on food producing/harvesting sub-system.
2. Their pursuits should enable them to earn a sustained decent living in order to adequately meet some of their food and other justifiable needs.
3. Their activities should make a significant contribution to the sustained availability and affordability of varied and wholesome food to a reasonable number of people in a community. Note that we are also supposed to alleviate hunger and the notion of entrepreneurship is not exactly congruent with it. Meanwhile, co-operative action in and among communities does so eminently well.
4. Engagement of youth in food systems should not result in soil erosion and pollution, loss of soil, agricultural and general bio-diversity, while striving to remedy those ills.
5. It would be most desirable to adhere closely to the local food culture in order to avoid the ills mentioned in 4 above.
6. Eco-systems service supplementation i.e., the use of biocides and artificial fertilisers, growth hormones, etc., should be used as sparingly as possible. Their adverse human and environmental side-effects have been well established. Moreover, residues of some such compounds act as endocrine disrupters among humans and animals.
7. Use of genetically modified crops and animals is to be deprecated at least until their long-term effects on man and animals can be impartially established. Since 1990’ties it has been known that the pollen from genetically modified maize is toxic to many pollinators and has contributed to their depletion in the US.
8. It must be emphasised that the youth should be active in every sub-system of a food system to agriculture and fishing to the food sales to the end-users. The last stage may involve co-operative food shops owned and run by them or small family-run restaurants serving a community not far from the source of production. Formation of ever-growing chains should be scrupulously avoided, for the competition it entails could only chain producers outside of them back onto poverty just as it has done both in the ‘developed’ and developing’ countries.

The Major Constraints:

I have tried to clear the grounds and set down our objectives. However, in this hasty attempt, I may not have rid myself of all the weeds, so it is not exhaustive, but the goals are set in stone.

• It is axiomatic that unless one is forced to undertake an action, no sane person would do things at random. A young or an older person would do something because that individual believes that it would lead to some desirable result. Youth avoid involvement in food systems because they believe it to be undesirable. Is this not obvious? Yes and no.
• This ‘no’ is crucial; it is one thing to desire something, but its achievability is never a given. Just consider millions of youth who flood into cities subsisting miserably, thousands of young people whose broken lives that litter the film production centres and training camps designed to produce highly paid players of foot ball, tennis, etc., would they have chosen such a fate had their expectations been more realistic? What makes youth indulge in such futile dreams and ruin their lives?
• The answer is simple. It is the mind numbing image of city life, cinema, TV, professional games, etc., as depicted by what humorously called ‘’media’ and ‘entertainment’ ably supported by advertising industry. It is ubiquitous, and even more deadly than their Nazi and soviet counterparts, for they manage young minds ‘softly’. The point is their insidious effect is ignored by all the current efforts to promote food production. It is essential to correct the current ‘image’ of food producers; after air and water, food is the most important thing needed to sustain life. Thus, its value derives from its importance to our lives and not from any preposterous ‘value chain’. This ‘not’ is logical; hence, it is not open to pointless debate.
• After the point above, we are ready to look at the other constraints. Youth everywhere live in more or less well-governed national states. Most in our target group have limited know-how and financial resources. Moreover, the components of every food system are directly or indirectly influenced by the government.
• Therefore, our present problem can be directly attributed either to the lack of appropriate policies relevant to food systems and other areas that have a bearing upon them, or if present, to flaws their in.
• So far as I know, no thorough analytic and synthetic approach seem to have been undertaken to diagnose and remedy this overarching constraint to development in general and youth engagement in food systems in particular.
• Even when the policies may seem to serve their purpose, they will fail to succeed unless they embody inter- and intra-policy harmony en masse. This harmony has to be determined with strict reference to their appropriateness. Please note that policy congruence does not involve appropriateness, thus it is reactive, hence unsuitable. Its use will always constitute an insurmountable constraint to success owing to its uncritical acceptance.
• Appropriateness is an attribute that runs through clearly and consistently from a policy, branching out into each and every strategic and tactical line of its implementation. When it obtains throughout, the policy embodies intra-policy harmony. When those strategic and tactical lines of implementation among the policies in the total policy set of a country, they embody intra-policy harmony.
• Appropriateness is established with scrupulous reference to the following criteria if the chosen strategy and tactic is suitable purely in its technical sense. A tactical approach on its final deployment represents what is actually done in the field like a farm, food storage facility, family-run food shop or a restaurant.

1. It shall not only degrade the environment in the ways described earlier, but will promote environmental regeneration and enhance the total bio-diversity of the area involved.
2. It will strive to gainfully employ as many young people as possible rather than resorting to labour-saving advanced technology that has the opposite effect.
3. It will contribute significantly to sustained local availability and affordability of food rather than only personal monetary gain. This excludes efforts to replace food crops with cash-crops and/or diverting turning local food crops into cash-crops as it happened in West Africa after the pea-nut export scandal following the advice given by the World Bank, which led to protein malnutrition among the local children.
4. It will promote co-operative effort in and among the local communities while depreciating internecine competition.
5. It will promote and take pride in the local food culture.
6. Its priority will be the local food needs, and its surplus can then be appropriately exchanged with other locales and regions. At this juncture, it is in appropriate to talk about anything global.
7. It will emphasise the importance of keeping as many sub-systems of the food system local. When appropriate, a one or more of its sub-systems may be operated by several neighbouring communities, a region or even nation-wide as in the use of railways as an element of its transport sub-system. Road transport is least effective and most expensive in terms of fuel efficiency and environmental damage.
8. It should allow its quickest sustainable implementation. This entails that it calls for readily available equipment, seed and livestock that are within the financial resources one may reasonably expect to have at one’s disposal, and can be put to more or less immediate use by the local youth after a short field training. The support this involves should be sustained and gradually reduced as the project takes root. The physical items mentioned here should be suitable for the local climate and the equipment should be easy to repair and maintain locally.

For the sake of brevity, I have not elaborated on the 8 criteria of appropriateness described above. But I think it is easy to expand on them provided that one observes a strict logical consistency throughout. I suggest that the other constraints arise directly either from lack of appropriate policies, lack of the types of harmony described here, and when they meet those requirements, wide-spread incompetence, corruption, and in some instances, natural disasters or armed conflict with or without general lawlessness.

However, it is difficult to root out incompetence until and unless one can be rid of the corruption that exists everywhere. It may be blatant or well hidden as it is in ‘mature democracies’. As long as hypocrisy remains something publicly criticised while quietly remaining a solid pillar of many a foreign policy, it is difficult to envisage how to achieve a lasting, just peace. So, instead of trying to empty the ocean with a tea spoon, let us look at the constraints arising from policy deficiencies.

I think the negative public perception of nearly all means of food production throughout the world is the greatest hindrance to youth from engaging in it. Of course, a set of other factors exacerbate the problem. However, it is imperative to design a universal public education strategy intended to bring about a radical change in public opinion as to the cardinal importance of food production and portraying the youth engaging in it as the most vital members of the society. This ought to be carried out at the global, regional and national levels using clear, logically cohesive simple language free of hyperbole.

We ought to transform the current education policies throughout the world, and what is needed is a rapid evolutionary change in it embodying the following elements:

1. Purpose of education shall not simply cater to the needs of tradesmen, but aim at enabling everybody to develop one’s own abilities in a way that will benefit oneself and one’s social group. It will underline the necessity to cooperate with other people and will deprecate schemes that promote competition. The latter will be replaced by aiming for the greatest excellence one may be able to achieve.
2. It shall inculcate into adults and children our well-being is inseparable from that of our environment as discussed earlier, and the current consumerist exploitation of common finite resources is unjustifiable, hence unacceptable.
3. Sequestration of huge monetary resources by the few is one of the greatest threats to human civilisation as we know it. It is time that we clearly understood such personal wealth is a cause for shame rather than pride.
4. Education should stress the fact that money is merely a tool usable to gain something else. Hence making its unlimited acquisition a most desirable goal is unreasonable.
5. It shall emphasise that food is the third vital necessity for life, and as we value our lives, food production ought to be considered an esteemed profession. Likewise, it shall teach people to value what is really worthy, while rejecting tinsel and trivia often portrayed as ‘cool’ or ‘glamorous’.

As for agriculture education, there seems to be a significant variation among the institutions responsible for it. Be that as it may the following is a non-exhaustive list of steps that may allow one to overcome the hurdle of inappropriateness in it.

1. Active cooperation with the relevant institutions needed to make use of the following training strategies in real time and place.
2. Priority should be given to quickest possible training of youth in and around agricultural areas. This training should be on-the-job type and should only utilise appropriate tools and other materials.
3. It should also provide similar training in food transport, storage, simple preservation and disposal either as raw or cooked food. Such outlets should be located in such a way so that the local communities will derive maximum nutritional benefit. As mentioned earlier, the sub-systems of a local food system should be appropriate both qualitatively and quantitatively. For example, no prestige project could meet this criterion.
4. It would be very unwise and dangerous to train anyone in what might be called ‘getting rich quick’ kind of agriculture. Recall that we want a decent life for youth as well as enable the hungry in rural areas end-users wholesome affordable food. Young food ‘entrepreneurs’ aiming to get rich cannot address the second part of our objective, and they will be left behind.

One of the most serious hindrances we face is the inappropriateness of finance policies in many countries. Defence allocation often exceeds education, agriculture and health budgets. How this hardly justifiable situation might be changed remains an intractable problem. Perhaps, a global effort at arms reduction to more reasonable levels might enable at least some of the worst affected countries to revise their defence allocations in favour of channelling more resources to those three fields.

Another aspect of this difficulty is how even ear-marked development aid is to be spent. For instance, surprisingly large number of industrialised donors requires that the receiver country should hire ‘experts’ from the former as well as buy equipment etc. All too often, such experts are incompetent with respect to the cultivars and livestock of the receiver country, and their equipment unsuitable for the climate, difficult for the local expertise to maintain, and spare parts are too expensive. Whether it is hidden or blatant, the incidence of corruption is always a question of degree. Bipartisan budget control might go some way to alleviate this difficulty.

The influence of law on our problem is twofold. First, success of rule of law does not depend on having excellent laws codified and ratified, but rather it depends on how effectively and rigorously the relevant laws are enforced. It is this last proviso that often confines the rule of law to print, but hardly on the ground. It is hard to envisage how to overcome this obstacle in order to ensure for the youth secure land tenure, security of their property, etc.

En passant, some well-meant international laws on children’s rights represent an insurmountable obstacle to task. In several parts of Africa and Eastern Europe, armed conflict has deprived many children of an adequate education. Now over 15 years of age, they may be given an opportunity to earn a decent income through agriculture, but this is forbidden by that international law until they are 18. Their disrupted lives make it impossible to procure a formal education and they remain an easy prey to wide variety of criminals. It is hope this self-defeating law will be soon pragmatically revised permitting those who are doing their best to help those young people without breaking the law.

Inept industry policies result in varying degrees of environmental degradation, air, sea and land pollution as well as soil erosion, which reduce eco-systems services including soil fertility and climate change. These have serious consequences for food production. Unless this is remedies, it would be difficult for youth to enter into a food system that would enable them to earn a decent living. All too often, unduly large allocations are made to inappropriate industries such as manufactories for which a country cannot provide enough raw materials. Enormous textile factories, sugar refineries, etc., are among some well-known examples. If such undertakings are rationally scaled down, considerable sums may be diverted to food production that would address chronic food shortage and unemployment.

Regardless of the gospel of free trade, it is obvious that unsuitable trade policies have adverse effects on local food production. Allowing the foreign concerns to set up factories using cheap local labour to make and sell industrial food in a country has the worst effect on achieving our goal.

1. It depends on a few crops or household animals usually a foreign high-yield varieties coming from industrial/factory farms. Their total dependence on artificial fertilisers and biocides degrades the soil and environment.
2. It eradicates local food culture by encouraging the local youth to consume items through advertisements designed to manage young minds. This consumption is often depicted as a la mode among the successful in some affluent country. Adverse health consequences of feeding on them are all around us while the authorities and experts are busy arguing about evidence of such results.
3. The same injurious results obtain from the import of such items. If we really wish to be successful in the present endeavour, 1 and 2 above should be highly restricted.
4. No progress will be made until and unless the countries that experience frequent food shortages are able and willing to free the national food production from every foreign control whatsoever. As it is the third vital necessity for life after air and water, people of a country should fully control its production and sales. Otherwise, democracy seems to be an even more nebulous notion when it does not allow people to control something necessary to sustain their lives.
5. Trade taxes on local food stuffs should be greatly reduced while the opposite applies to the items outside the local food culture. Such tax benefits should also accrue to appropriate agricultural equipment and a set of carefully chosen items essential to food production.
6. Grants and/or low interest loan facilities should be established to encourage the establishment of farm and food outlets run on a co-operative basis. This will enable sharing the farm machinery for their optimal use at a lower cost. This is also applicable to any other appropriate sub-system of the local food system.

It is often over looked that the physical fitness and health of the majority of youth in less affluent countries who migrate into cities are considerably below that of countries average. Apart from malnutrition, lack of adequate primary health care is a relevant factor here. I think national health policy should fully concentrate on rural health care, not on paper, but by undertaking concrete action. We already know what is needed; the difficulty lies in motivating those who have the authority and means to act.

In this hasty note, I have concentrated on policy for the following reasons:

   • Many local projects may show excellent results on the short run, but they often suffer from any one or more shortcomings given below:

1. It may lack wide-spread applicability even within a country unless it cooperates with programmes that produce different food items for home consumption.
2. Inappropriate of its methods and/output will make it would make it impossible to sustain.
3. It may lack follow-up that includes financial and technical backing for a sufficiently long period.
4. It may involve unrealistic expectations among participants by laying emphasis on profit and competition.

Owing to those reasons and more, one ought to be most circumspect with what one may choose as ‘good practices’. It should not escape our minds that engagement of youth in food systems is only one side of a coin. The food output from such a system has to be purchased and consumed by the end-users. End-users are the last element in any food system, and unless the exchange of values between that element and the rest of the system i.e., money for food is not a fair one, it is hard to see how hunger and malnutrition can be avoided. Hence, co-operative fair trade ought to be emphasised rather than one’s profit.

As I have said before, the present problem is so acute and wide-spread; its resolution requires well coordinate national efforts to ameliorate it. The sole governance option open to us here are sound policies and their appropriate implementation. International and regional organisations can play an important facilitating role here.

Best wishes!

Lal Manavado.