How do we make agriculture attractive for young people?
“Agriculture is a science, an art and a business practice”
-Agribusiness Expert, Evaline Sang
Authors: Naliaka Odera & Kari Mugo
Kenya, like other African countries, has a youth unemployment issue. In a country where 60% of the population are under 35, the high rate of unemployment amongst youth has a significant impact on the country’s economy as well as its future prospects for growth. According to Shujaaz, a nairobi-based social venture that carries out youth research, Kenya’s “formal job market can absorb less than 10% of labour-market entrants and youth are expected to create their own jobs in the informal sector.”
For these reasons, “the agricultural value-chain seems like a good place to be for a young entrepreneur,” but this is often not the reality. Many youths see agriculture as unglamorous. Evaline Sang’, a 2021 Mawazo Learning Exchange Fellow and agribusiness expert and lecturer at Kenyatta University has seen this first-hand. She regularly interacts with young people as a teacher and patron of various agricultural clubs at secondary and tertiary levels of education in Kenya. There, she has witnessed the negative attitudes towards agriculture that turn many youth away.
With such a bad rap, how do we make careers in agriculture more attractive? Evaline, who is pursuing her doctoral degree in Agribusiness Management at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), thinks the problem lies in how we educate young people about agriculture. As an educator, she wants to equip her students with the skills and knowledge to transform agriculture into agribusiness, but she also wants to inculcate a positive mindset that sees agriculture for what it is; a dynamic career that is the domain of artists and scientists too.
Mawazo: Let’s start with definitions, is there a difference between ‘agriculture’ and ‘farming’? What about agribusiness? What are we talking about when we use these terms?
Evaline: People often make the mistake of using the terms interchangeably, but it is important to know the difference. Agriculture is a general term as opposed to farming and agribusiness. It is a science, an art and a business practice. It is an art in the performance part of it, the actions that it entails. It is a science because of the vast number of studies and research that it involves, especially when we consider advanced technologies that are coming into agriculture. It is also a business because we look at the difference between our investments and the outcomes.
If we are to break it down from here, farming falls within agriculture and it looks at the practical part of agriculture. Agribusiness looks at the returns on investment. It also entails marketing and improving these returns. My focus, which is in research and teaching, also falls under agribusiness.
Mawazo: How did you become interested in agriculture?
Evaline: I grew up in Benditai village, which is in Kericho County, and agriculture was a part of our daily lives. I liked the work and how it made me feel like I was helping my parents. In high school, I was at boarding school and whenever school closed, it felt good to return home and help on the farm. I got paid for the work and I would come back to school with more pocket money than my friends because I had helped out.
When I was finishing high school, my mum encouraged me to start thinking about how I could make money for myself. I had noticed that pyrethrum, used widely in insecticides, was quite a popular cash crop in my region. My parents gave me a small piece of land where I planted pyrethrum, and it was so exciting when I was able to make some returns on it. I think the whole experience shaped me to make agriculture part of my life. Later on, in university, I was able to take a course in Agriculture, and realised that my experience in farming actually meant that I had been participating in agribusiness all along.
Mawazo: The theme for this year’s World Youth Skills Day is ‘Transforming youth skills for the future.’ How do you think agriculture fits into this year’s theme?
Evaline: One of the things we need to keep in mind is that agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy, providing 40% of the total Kenyan workforce with jobs and employing 70% of the rural workforce. Because of this, much of the economic activity in Kenya is actually agriculture-dependent. Having said that, the youth population, which is the biggest subgroup in our population, has a very high unemployment rate. We have a duty to find a way to connect the youth with job creating markets, and there is no greater [job creating market] one in Kenya than agriculture. Our work is to make agriculture feel relevant and exciting for young people. This generation of young people have so much potential to transform agriculture, especially with how innovative they are.
Mawazo: As an agribusiness expert, what are you learning about youth perceptions of agriculture?
Evaline: Youth perception of agriculture is quite negative and there are many contributing factors. One thing that I noticed growing up in the village, for instance, is that children are told they should grow up, succeed, and leave farming behind. It supports the narrative that farming is not for driven and intelligent children. When that message is passed on daily, of course there is a negative sentiment towards farming.
To make matters worse, when I was teaching young people in high schools in Nairobi I realised that schools often use agricultural activities as a punishment. For example, to punish a child who is noisy in class, they are told to go weed outside. I had to tell the head of the school where I was teaching that farming should never be used as a punishment in schools.
Changes in the Kenyan educational curriculum have also led to Agriculture being introduced as a subject only in high school. By then, young people have already made up their minds about the field, incorporating all the negative stereotypes that they have picked up. I often think of the saying, “If you want to mould something, mould it while it is still wet.” I found that high school students had such a distant idea of what farming could do for them. They had very little incentive to choose agriculture as something that they would specialise in.
Mawazo: What are some of the tools that you use to encourage young adults to take up agriculture?
Evaline: Changing an attitude is very difficult. I think we need to go back to the drawing board and look at how we are introducing agriculture as a subject to children. In Kenyan schools, agriculture is introduced later in their education and comes with negative connotations. In rural areas, we see the archaic tools and technologies people are using in agriculture. There has been very little innovation in farming approaches and technologies in villages. This has a significant impact on the returns that the farms can make and colours the perceptions of the industry among youth.
Yet young people are hungry for work, so the question becomes, ‘how do we make agri-entrepreneurs?’ Rather than focusing on subsistence farming, we can teach young people how to employ creative thinking when it comes to agriculture. To use their innovation to make new products from existing products and attract a new set of buyers. We need to create an environment where young people can plug into the mechanised world which makes agriculture a sophisticated career.
In teaching undergraduates, I focus on the business side of things and innovation, how to turn something small into something larger. My students continue to surprise me with what they are able to do. Some of them have started projects with very little amounts of money. They have shown determination, drive and innovation. They have been able to embrace challenges positively. One project had a few of them come together in a group partnership where they started a greenhouse tomato farm on a small plot of land. They contacted me recently, so excited to tell me that they had been able to employ a few people.
Mawazo: Your research is in agribusiness management, specifically looking at climate change adaptation strategies. How will this research positively impact the future of agriculture?
Evaline: We cannot bury our heads in the sand and say that climate change is not affecting us. Our climate is affecting our soils, our crops, and so much more, and we need to address these issues. Broadly, I am looking at what the barriers are to farmers embracing new strategies. My research explores the effectiveness of different climate change adaptation strategies and will help in identifying, designing, and implementing effective climate change adaptation strategies for Kenyan farmers. Through these strategies, we can improve incomes for farmers through the shocks of climate change. And by keeping incomes reliable, agriculture can remain both an attractive and a viable livelihood for the next generation.
You can learn more about the Mawazo Learning Exchange Fellowship programme, which supports the professional development of African women in the knowledge sector, and meet our other Fellows at the page here. This article appears in the African Futures - Future of Education series. To read more articles and view events around African Futures, visit our dedicated webpage.