Getting the youth involved in agriculture is not that easy as one may think. Having traditional approaches to farming systems, lacking commercial extension services and the subject matter specialists to advise the youth on their farms whether rain-fed, irrigation or livestock has deterred the youth.
Well, capacity building cannot be achieved through short workshops rather, it requires months of training to bridge the gap between
Theory and practical solutions needed for setup, considering precision driven smart agriculture is the way .
When considering the vast arable lands, it is not farfetched to know that the land resources domiciled in the rural settlements where community
members may consider youths as strangers and will only truncate all the processes. Engaging the youth in agriculture means of Livelihood
is not quite so obvious as it appears. The commonly told story describes farmers as poor, and that is a lie.
Therefore, griping over the high cost of fertilizer and diesel for pumping water is not as realistic
for most of the more established growers. The potential clients are, quite often, affluent enough to be able to afford the inputs required by
production which will not rely on government subsidies that are not sustainable for long-term to the government and farming communities in
the long run.
Engagement of youths in agriculture should be at the local government level, with oversight from state agricultural
development projects under Ministry of Agriculture. There shall be strict Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning
System should be in place to ensure that the youth do not deviate from the desired goals.
One of the simplest ways to involve youth in farming is to target students in colleges and universities studying agriculture. For university students, the National Youth Service Corps programme could be replaced with an agricultural programme corpus
Where beneficiaries get the capital as a loan to start agribusinesses. The same model can be replicated for Colleges and other educational \
educational institutions. With time, as their friends see the sustainable livelihoods practised by their friends in agriculture, \
earning income and enjoying luxuries, the movement will build up naturally.
It is not enough to say that we need to encourage the youth to go into farming; it needs actions and deliberate
Planning to see tangible results in a timely manner.