Promoting youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems - e-consultation on the Report’s scope, proposed by the HLPE Steering Committee
During its 46th Plenary Session (14 – 18 October 2019), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) requested its High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) to produce a report entitled “Promoting youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems”, to be presented in 2021 (the request is provided below) [1].
The report, which will provide recommendations to the CFS workstream “Promoting youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems”, will:
- Review the opportunities for, and constraining factors to youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems, including youth access to:
- Knowledge, information and education;
- Productive land, natural resources and inputs;
- Productive tools, extension, advisory and financial services;
- Training, education and mentorship programmes;
- Innovation and new technologies;
- Markets;
- Policy-making processes.
- Examine aspects related to employment, salaries, and working conditions;
- Review rules, regulations and policy approaches, including territorial approaches, aimed at addressing the complexity of structural economic, cultural, social and spatial transformations currently taking place globally;
- Explore the potential of food systems and enhanced rural-urban linkages to provide more and better jobs for women and youth.
To implement this CFS request, the HLPE is launching an open e-consultation to seek views and comments on the following scope and building blocks of the report, outlined below.
Please note that in parallel to this scoping consultation, the HLPE is calling for interested experts to candidate to the Project Team for this report. The call for candidature is open until 21 January 2020. Read more here.
Proposed draft Scope of the HLPE Report on “Promoting youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems” by the HLPE Steering Committee
Engagement of youth (both women and men) is key in making the transition towards sustainable and healthy agriculture and food systems. It is estimated that more than 2 billion children will be born worldwide between 2015 and 2030 (UN, 2015 [2]). The majority of these children will be in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where agriculture and food systems constitute the largest employer, and where the needs in terms of availability, access and quality of food and nutrition are greatest. There is a large untapped reservoir of employment opportunities in the agri-food sector which is increasingly pinched by significant labour constraints in many areas of the world. Yet, due to limited access to land, natural resources, infrastructure, finance, technology, markets, knowledge, and poor working conditions the sector cannot be considered attractive and sustainable for youth. There is a high incidence of informality, casual labour, underemployment, child labour, forced labour, working poverty, and among the lowest rates of access to social protection and unionisation in the agricultural sector. Quite often, young women, once married, are mostly engaged in farming, often for subsistence, while young men exit the sector in search of other income opportunities and greater autonomy. Discriminatory traditional and cultural norms leave women disadvantaged as regards access to productive resources, limiting their ability to innovate on their farms. It is then important to better understand aspirations of the youth, differentiated by gender, class, ethnicity and other forms of difference, to enable sustainable food systems.
As the global average age of these farmers approaches 60 years, it is essential to develop systems, policies, and programmes that encourage the engagement of youth in agriculture and food systems and related professions, including research and innovation. These should provide spaces and mechanisms for participation, and opportunities for entrepreneurship. Traditional subsistence agriculture is not attractive to the youth and it is essential to transform agriculture and food systems in a way that is intellectually challenging and economically rewarding. Retaining youth in agriculture also requires improving living standards and quality of services in rural areas and mid-sized town.
Engagement and leadership of young women and men in agriculture and food systems is essential as youth need to be recognized as agents of change and not (only) as receivers of assistance and support. Youth participation in decision making related to agriculture and food systems requires changes to the enabling environment, through the institution of specific mechanisms to allow the voices of youth to be heard; and recognition of the social, economic, cultural and political status of youth, to allow them to fully participate. The legislative and institutional environment influences the respect of young people’s rights, working conditions, job creation and youth engagement. Coherence between sectoral and employment policies and legislation needs to be promoted to ensure that there are no conflicting objectives in different policies, and that policies reinforce one another.
The objectives of this report are to better understand the gender differentiated reasons for the limited engagement of youth in agriculture and food systems, to identify new opportunities for youth to improve their efficiency and sustainability, and to provide recommendations to facilitate their active engagement and employment. These recommendations will be in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in particular with SDG2, SDG1, SDG8, SDG5, SDG9, and SDG10, and with other global and regional level agreements.
During this e-consultation, the HLPE Steering Committee welcomes your feedback. In particular, you are invited to:
- Share your comments on the objectives and content of this report as outlined above;
- Share good practices and successful experiences to improve youth engagement in the governance of agriculture and food systems; to address obstacles hindering youth ability to engage as entrepreneurs, and to generate decent work opportunities for youth in agriculture and food systems, at different scales (from local to global) and by different stakeholders (public, private or civil society), including with respect to legislation and the enabling environment;
- Share the most recent references that should be considered in this report;
- Provide feedback on the following questions, identifying any gender issues, to guide the development of the report:
- Why is there a need to promote youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems? What are the key issues and opportunities?
- How do the evolution and transitions of agriculture, food systems and nutrition affect youth engagement and employment? How can agriculture and food systems employment become more attractive for youth, especially considering the rural-urban continuum? What would be needed to improve standards of living and services in rural areas and mid-sized towns, to retain youth and young families?
- What governance transformations are necessary to enable and encourage youth participation in agriculture and food systems, and what actions are required to equip youth with the necessary skills and confidence in fully engaging in these decision-making processes?
- What are the most promising pathways to transform current agriculture and the food systems in developing countries to make them more attractive to the youth?
- What are the best strategies for fully engaging youth, in particular young women, in opportunities to acquire adequate skills and learning opportunities to further develop their knowledge and enable them to be leaders in innovative agriculture and the transformation of food systems?
- What are the most appropriate policies to remove obstacles to empower youth initiate and/or upscale activities in agriculture and related services, in the food supply chain, in agroecology, and in the food environment, as well as in nutrition and innovation, in accordance to their skills, aspirations, assets and contexts?
- What are the most appropriate policies and initiatives to facilitate the education-to-labour market transition and youth recruitment and retention in agriculture and food systems’ related activities? What nodes and activities in supply chains have the highest potential for generating decent jobs for youth? What new types of training are needed foster more agroecological approaches to farming?
- What is the extent of wage discrepancies against youth and women in agriculture and food systems, and what are some successful experiences in removing such wage differentials?
- What data is necessary to support policy development to enhance youth engagement and employment, and to create awareness of the specific needs, vulnerabilities and opportunities of disadvantaged youth?
[1] The request for HLPE Report # 16 is extracted from the CFS 46 document “CFS Multi-year programme of work 2020-2023” (Ref: CFS 2019/46/7), available at http://www.fao.org/3/na703en/na703en.pdf
- Read 57 contributions
I think that one area of importance in the proposed youth engagement project in agriculture is on how to distinguish "actual youths with genuine interest in agriculture engagement and politically motivated and media youth farmers as well as criteria to determine youth selection for participation in youth training/incubation programmes. Also, there is need to look at factors that contributed to successful youth urban and rural agrepreneurs as lesson and guide.
Empowering young agri-entrepreneurs
Youth are the future of food security. With an agricultural sector characterized by an ageing labour force, involving youth in agriculture is a pressing challenge. Yet, few young people see a place for themselves in agriculture due to challenges such as inadequate access to land, credit and markets. In addition, they are affected by high unemployment rates and often migrate from rural areas looking for better opportunities.
FAO works with different stakeholders to empower youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture, following the CFS Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems. This is done by creating institutional, policy and incentive frameworks that account for the needs of youth, as well as equipping young agri-entrepreneurs with the skills they need to make their businesses thrive.
The following publications have been designed to facilitate this process.
Empowering youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture and food systems: Rapid capacity assessment tool
This tool helps practitioners, such as government agencies, youth organizations, or development partners, to carry out multi-stakeholder assessments of existing and needed capacities to engage and empower youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture and food systems.
Empowering youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture and food systems: Guidance for organizers and facilitators of the rapid capacity assessment tool
This document provides guidance to support the utilization of the Rapid Capacity Assessment Tool. It includes relevant information on how to plan, design and conduct the capacity assessment, and suggestions on how to prepare and facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions
Empowering youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture and food systems: Challenges, opportunities and lessons learned from six African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Uganda)
This report aims to enhance understanding on the main challenges and opportunities to engage youth in responsible agricultural investment by giving voice to those most concerned. It summarizes key findings from a series of multi-stakeholder capacity assessment workshops with participants from six African countries.
Empowering Youth to Engage in Responsible Investments in Agriculture and Food Systems
The capacity assessment tool explained in a nutshell.
Further reading
Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems: Why it matters
The FAO Umbrella Programme “Supporting Responsible Investments in Agriculture and Food Systems”
The CFS principles for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems fact sheet
Mr. Moctar KANGO
Read the attachment
Thank you for the opportunity to share and shape the future of farming.
First of all, I would recommend that youths are engaged in policly formulation. and in program design to develop the content and make young people own the process by engaging them in the consultation and dialogue process.
There is a rising young population, and it is a valuabel wealth of resources in skills, strenght, and ability to help in Agricultural production. Young people are still tender and can be shaped into what is required especially with great interest. Interest can be generated once farming is made more inviting and more engaging for the youths.
Growing up, my parents made farming so interesting and enjoyable, that we were looking forward to going to the farm, despite the peasant nature of production. Farming for us was a learning process and a way of life. You enjoy the fruits of your labour. We produced from backyard garderns for vegetables, to major crops in the farms, there is this excitment when its harvest season as we bring home the food crops, or have meats from the animals we keep.
Engaging the youth in the Agricultural value chain has the potential to increase the qunatity and quality of Agricultral produce. Young people have the strenght to manage food processing until it reaches the final consumers. They are often neglected and used for political reasons or to push the agendas of local politicians, by uing youths for political assignments. But when it comes to farming, fewer youths are engaged because also, they seem to enjoy the luxury of local politics.
People in rural communities should be provided basic social services that people in urban areas have, and going to urban cities would be less inviting for young people. The challenge with engaging youths in Agricultural production in rural places is the lack of skills to convert local production to wealth, and also the lack of market to make good returns from their produce. I would strongly recommend capacity building initiatives that is designed specifically for youths in rural places, and empower youths with tools and resources needed to improve production, which has the great potential to increase production, put more money in their pockects and make them more employable.
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
Mr. Abdikafi Yusuf
The youth are more likely to embrace new technological advancement in agriculture ( digital farming, digital marketing etc,) but they have one disadvantage, that is lack of space and captail to make real investments. this forum has the opptunity to adress policy issues and social economic barriers that hinder youth engagement in agriculture. To me this is the opportunity to understand the youth dynamics and challenges and how they are approaching these obstacles
Commentaires sur le rapport
L'avant projet met bien évidence l'importance de mieux comprendre les aspirations des jeunes, différenciées selon le sexe, la classe sociale, l’appartenance ethnique et autres formes de différence, afin de permettre la mise en place de systèmes alimentaires durables. C'est pertinent parce que dans toutes les initiatives visant à promouvoir la participation et l'engagement des jeunes dans les systèmes agro-alimentaires, leurs aspirations à eux-mêmes ne sont presque jamais considérées.
Références les plus récentes à prendre en compte
Mabiso, A., and Benfica, R. (2019) The narrative on rural youth and economic opportunities in Africa: Facts, myths and gaps. IFAD, Rural Development Report, Background Papers 21.
Informations en retour
1. Il est nécessaire de promouvoir la participation et l'emploi des jeunes dans l'agriculture et les systèmes alimentaires car l'agriculture est avant tout le secteur qui fournit les matières premières à l'alimentation des peuples, et face à une population mondiale vieillissante, il y a un besoin impératif pour tous les pays de renouveller la classe des acteurs agricoles. En Afrique où le secteur emploie 65% de la population, c'est d'autant plus important de revisiter le travail des jeunes dans le secteur face aux taux de sous-emploi visible et invisible très élevés. Les principaux problèmes qui amenuisent les efforts de participation des jeunes dans le secteur sont le manque d'appui technique continu, les efforts limités de profilage, et le financement. Plusieurs opportunités existent et dans tous les secteurs de la société pour intéresser les jeunes à l'agriculture : les arts et loisirs relatifs à l'agro-tourisme ; l'agro-entrepreneuriat, la finance agricole, les technologies et services agricoles et agroalimentaires ; les foires culturelles et agricoles ; les médias axés sur l'agriculture ; l'éducation, la formation et la recherche en agriculture ; l'alimentation, la santé et la nutrition des famille ; et les politiques agricoles, législations foncières, et l'administration en général.
2. En réalité de nombreux jeunes s'engagent déjà dans l'agriculture et les systèmes alimentaires, soit parce qu'ils sont intéressés par le secteur, soit parce qu'ils n'ont pas d'autre alternative. Cependant, nous faisons face au défi du maintien des jeunes dans le secteur parce que dans de nombreuses régions du monde, le secteur a bénéficié de plusieurs décennies de sous-investissement qui en ont fait un secteur fournissant l'alimentation de la population mondiale mais créant plusieurs pauvres et travailleurs avec des revenus non décents. Il serait compliqué d'encourager un jeune à se créer un avenir dans un secteur où il voit peu d'avenir pour lui et sa famille ou trop de difficultés pour se faire une place.
4. Les voies les plus prometteuses pour rendre les systèmes agricoles et alimentaires plus attrayants pour les jeunes sont dans les services (fourniture diverses, médias), la production, l'agroalimentaire, les technologies, la finance, l'éducation et formation, et l'élaboration de politiques.
5. Il faut des stratégies axées sur un meilleur profilage des jeunes afin d'identifier les impératifs de capacités par profil de jeune dans les systèmes agricoles et alimentaires. Un rapport récent ACED-Bénin (2017). Analyse des profils des jeunes dans le secteur agricole au Bénin : les impératifs de capacités illustre bien le besoin de ce type de stratégies primordiales à toute initiative visant à engager pleinement et de manière durable les jeunes dans les systèmes agro-alimentaires.
6. Parallèlement, et notamment dans les pays africains, nous avons un réel besoin de revoir les programmes et curricula d'éducation et de formation en agriculture et y intégrer des outils prouvés d'évaluation professionnelle et d'orientation de carrière afin de mieux accompagner les jeunes formés dans les centres d'entrepreneuriat agricole, ainsi que les jeunes sortis des universités, dans leur projet professionnel et plan de carrière. Par exemple, encourager les jeunes à se positionner dans la seule sphère de l’agro-business est un premier pas et peut faire d’eux les champions économiques de demain s’ils se positionnent sur différents maillons avec des moyens mis à leur disposition. Mais en plus, il faut en orienter et en équiper d’autres pour façonner des politiques agricoles plus inclusives, améliorer l’environnement des activités et affaires agricoles, produire des données agricoles, repenser la nutrition et la santé des familles, valoriser l’agriculture et l’alimentation par les médias, financer les acteurs du secteur agricole, etc. Et les jeunes ne peuvent pas se positionner s'ils ne connaissent pas mieux leurs compétences actuelles et ce qui les intéresse dans les système agricole et alimentaire.
Ariel Djomakon, Spécialiste en finance agricole et en développement rural
This activity is now closed. Please contact [email protected] for any further information.