RE: Youth in agriculture: what lessons can we draw from evaluations? | Eval Forward

Youth in Agriculture is an important issue to discuss. We witness this in Palestine. Farmers are even suffering from the lack of work power  in farming. Agriculture schools are also suffering from low number of students despite offering scholarships. This forced universities to go down with average scores for admission to the University, which is unfortunately reflected on the quality of fresh graduated agronomists. 

This ignorance of agriculture and deviation will for sure affect the agricultural production if governments do not work on solving such problem. The ultimate solution is to increase profitability of agribusiness and agriculture as a whole. Other means to achieve this could be:

1- Direction of School students at early stages to like agriculture and think of it as a high class activity not a low level career. Curricula could be the entrance, Drama could be also a good tool.

2- Give incentives for agriculture entrepreneurs  to make agriculture  more  rewarding. Incentives such as long term free of interest loans.

3-  UN should do something on the national level like announcing a year as the "international Year of Agriculture" Thou there was family farming year, Quinoa  year, but agriculture explicitly have another impact. This should be also followed by actions on the ground like supporting initiatives.

4- Technology should be more simplified for use at the small scale family farming level. 

5- Agriculture as another source of income  for low level income could help also keep the agricultural activities. 

6- Research on the root causes of this phenomena on country level will help in identifying strategies to bring youth back to agreiculture.

And the story is long, but should be dealt with the soonest and to the highest level possible.

Best

Naser Qadous

Palestine