Youth in the driving seat of agricultural revolution

YOUTHS face many structural, financial, technological and knowledge barriers to participate in agriculture. In some cases, the youths have challenges accessing land while those that have pieces of land and produce struggle to find viable markets for the produce whether crop or livestock. Addressing these barriers will be a giant step in restoring the lustre in farming and make youths enjoy the attendant benefits that come with farming as a business.

Gainfully employing youths in agriculture is not only a necessary action for economic growth of countries like Zimbabwe with estimated 60 percent of the total population youth, but it is the only and proven path to inclusive growth. Such an action could be the way to reverse the considerable migration of youths from rural areas to urban centres and abroad.

African governments acknowledge the importance of youth participation with the 2014 Malabo Declaration targeting youth engagement in agriculture, the creation of jobs in the agriculture value chains and the support and facilitation of preferential entry and participation for women and youths in gainful and attractive agribusiness opportunities.

A visit in April this year, in the company of officials from Government as well as UK Department for International Development (DFID) to Kwekwe District confirmed to me and those I was travelling with that youth participation in agriculture is indeed the right pathway for achieving broad-based economic growth every Zimbabwean dreams of.

We visited a 28-year-old farmer named Desire Sibanda, a participant in the Livelihoods and Food Security Programme (LFSP), which is supported by UKAid and managed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and Palladium International in partnership with a consortium of NGOs. We were all awestruck by how his participation in this programme had transformed his life and that of his community.

What greeted our eyes as we entered the homestead was the cleanliness of the yard, a recently constructed fowl run as well as the lush maize, sweet potato and sorghum crop. Casting my eyes to the east of the yard, I saw a woman drawing water from a deep well and there was a storage tank meant for watering the garden.

Interestingly, Desire received neither a handout nor financial subsidy from the programme. What the project provided Desire was hands-on training on production and marketing of crops and livestock and exposing him to best practices in the nearby demonstration plot run by a Lead Farmer who has benefited from the programme.

Desire was very quick to adopt what he had seen in the master demonstration and even improve upon it. Having completed his O-Levels and receiving LFSP training on gross margin budgeting, Desire is now able to apply the gained knowledge in selecting enterprises that offer him the highest return.

Participants under LFSP are taken through diverse training and practical demonstrations on how they can transit from subsistence farming to producing what the market demands. An essential feature of the programme is training farmers on financial literacy, good agronomic and livestock husbandry practices, diversification of production and consumption, and nutritional behaviour changes so they can achieve both food security and commercial objectives.

Desire has transformed from subsistence to commercial farming over the last two seasons. After selling the surplus eight tonnes of maize and earning $3 120 during the 2016-17 season, Desire bought a submersible pump, a generator and a storage tank.

He also drilled a 30-metre-deep borehole which is used to water vegetables as well as provide clean and safe water for a number of households within his village. During the 2017-18 season Desire realised a total gross income of $5,279,60 from maize (6ha), sweet potatoes (1ha) and tomatoes (0,2ha).

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