I supervised two PhD dissertations: 1. Determinants of rural youth participation in farming (2014), 2. Participation of young women in agriculture: an analytical study of their involvement, attitude and aspirations (2018). Also, I conducted a Rural Youth Mentoring programme in 2017, wherein, 105 youths were mentored to attract them to take up agriculture. We found that youths perceive agriculture as one of the most unattractive profession to pursue. They feel so mainly due to hardships their parents suffer in agriculture, due to risks and uncertainties involved, slow rate of returns and pace of life. With growing influence of media especially the Social Media channels, youth aspirations have gone further up, they increasingly find agriculture lacking in glamour. At the same time a new class of farmers is emerging, that is highly educated, having experienced high profile jobs, mostly without previous experience of farming. Such new generation farmers could be the role models of rural youths, because they are bringing in some glamour in the farming by engaging in modern practices, value addition and innovative marketing of farm products. In our mentoring programme, we invited innovative farmers for delivering lectures and also organized the visits of youth to their farming ventures. Such mentoring activities may help in changing the attitudes of youth towards agriculture. We need young and innovative farmers engaged in farming, doing it a bit differently and earning more profits than merely focusing on more production which the conventional old generation farmers usually do. We would be able to attract farmers, if we could promote, market driven agriculture from production driven farming as more production often doesn’t ensure profits. Youth need various kinds of support viz technical, financial including handholding, which quite often is not available to them.
Mentoring youth is the key:
https://ypard.net/testimonials/mentoring-rural-youth-make-agriculture-attractive
https://ypard.net/news/mentoring-changes-lives
女士 jaya surya kumari manthena