1. Who Wants to Farm? Youth Aspirations, Opportunities and Rising Food Prices
- Author:
- Jennifer Leavy and Naomi Hossain
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Who wants to farm? In an era of land grabs and environmental uncertainty, improving smallholder productivity has become a higher priority on the poverty and food security agenda in development, focusing attention on the next generation of farmers. Yet emerging evidence about the material realities and social norms and desires of young people in developing countries indicates a reasonably widespread withdrawal from work on the land as an emerging norm. While de-agrarianisation is not new, policymakers are correct to be concerned about a withdrawal from the sector: smallholder productivity growth, and agricultural transformation more broadly, depend in part on the extent to which capable, skilled young people can be retained or attracted to farming, and on policies that support that retention. So who wants to farm, and under what conditions? Where are economic, environmental and social conditions favourable to active recruitment by educated young people into farming? What policy and programmatic conditions are creating attractive opportunities in farming or agro-food industry livelihoods?
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, and Food
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Latin America