Motivating and Attracting Youth in Agriculture

Abstract

In India, the total youth population increased from 168 million in 1971 to 422 million in 2011 and in 2017, 356 million, against China's 269 million. India's population is expected to remain young probably longer than that of China and Indonesia. Unfortunately only around 5 per cent of the rural youth is currently getting engaged in agriculture. This is simply because they do not find agriculture a creative, profitable and above all a respectable profession. Thus, we do see an exodus of youth from rural to urban areas in search of alternative employment/option. Moreover, a clear strategy and enabling environment to motivate and attract youth in agriculture are lacking. Youth is disinterested mainly because of poor infrastructure, less education facilities, practically no skill development opportunities, lack of incentives and rewards, and problems of land ownership, credit facilities and availability, value chain and farmer-market linkages. In addition, agriculture is currently faced with numerous daunting challenges such as over-exploitation of land, water and agrobiodiversity, decline in factor productivity, costly inputs, low income and production uncertainties due to adverse effects of climate change. Under such a scenario, the involvement of youth in agriculture is a challenge since they are energetic, innovative, and more receptive to new ideas/adoption of advanced technologies rather than traditional agriculture. The present-day agriculture requires intelligence and hard work, strong will and commitment and hence, the future strategy should motivate the youth to become job providers and agents of change rather than to remain as job seekers. Thus, the new strategy should be to reorient present-day agriculture from crop based to farming systems’ mode based with emphasis on ‘plough to plate’ approach which is more relevant, efficient, demand-driven, productive, competitive and profitable. It must also ensure food, nutrition and environmental security for all, being important to achieve SDGs. The paper embraces the major challenges being faced, need for retaining youth in agriculture and the mechanism and strategies to motivate and attract youth in agriculture.