Need to involve young people in agriculture

INVOLVING young people in agriculture and allowing them to participate equally in the economy will help South Africa eradicate poverty.

These are the findings of the International Fund for Agricultural Development in its flagship publication The Rural Development Report 2016, presented in Pretoria recently.

The organisation, a specialised UN agency based in Rome, invests in rural people, empowering them to reduce poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and strengthen resilience.

“Government policies that bring rural young people into the economic mainstream are essential for South Africa’s sustainable development,” said the organisation’s president, Kanayo Nwanze.

He emphasised that with almost a quarter of South Africans aged between 15 and 24, and more than half of them unemployed, policies that expanded employment – especially in agriculture – were essential.

“Who is going to grow the food for us tomorrow?

“We need our young people to take their creativity, their energy and their capacity for hard work and apply it to growing and processing food.

“But it doesn’t just happen. It depends on the choices that are made, firstly by governments, but also by the private sector, by civil society, and by institutions like ours.”

The report, he said, was a rallying call to policymakers and development practitioners to beat poverty.

“It brings together leading thinkers to analyse the experiences of rural development in over 60 developing countries, including South Africa.

“This extensive research provides a solid foundation on which leaders and institutions can base their policy choices and investments.”

Critical

Nwanze said this focus on rural development was critical because three quarters of the world’s poor lived in rural areas, and the incomes of 2.5 billion people worldwide still depended directly on rural small farms.

Hans Binswanger-Mkhize, Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria who contributed to the writing of the report, said inclusiveness was essential for poverty reduction, and this was where South Africa was lacking.

“Inclusiveness is about providing everyone, without exception, with livelihood opportunities and the ability to participate in the economy,” he said.

“In South Africa’s rural areas, this has absolutely not happened.”

Tsakani Ngomane, the outcome facilitator on Rural Development from the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, said the report resonated well with the objectives of the government’s National Development Plan 2030.

“But what is clear is that even though we have the right policies, it is not happening in an inclusive manner.”

The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions said recently that there were some barriers to including the youth in farming.

“These challenges include inadequate resources availed to the youth for investment, to the extent that youth who are qualified and interested in agriculture do not qualify to access such resources due to a number of reasons.

“There are also very few institutions that are ready to provide capital and technical support for the youth to get engaged in agriculture.”

Social factors including public perception about farming and the influence of parents who discouraged their children from becoming farmers also contributed to the low participation of youth in agriculture, especially primary production. “A negative stigma is associated with farming.”