All in One Rhythm: Lessons learned

More than one month ago, Maracanã stadium celebrated the end of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Yes, those festive days brought many surprises, unforgettable – and painful – ones, especially for us Brazilians. By suffering, we learned that results come with commitment, planning, humility and good technique. Charisma and good will are great complements, but alone they are unable to succeed.

Similar conclusion can apply to the role of young people in promoting development through agriculture. Motivation alone is not able to reach success if not surrounding by a good plan, good habits and a learning spirit. Therefore we launched the series “All in one Rhythm” with the purpose of discovering new strategies, innovational solutions and sound advice for encouraging young professionals in this huge tropical land to use agriculture to promote development.

Innovate, innovate, innovate!

The lessons learned were many. Bernardo Viscondi remembered that innovation was key to attract young Brazilians to agribusiness sector. As he pointed out, young professionals here tend to live in big cities in order to have a better lifestyle, but their interest in agriculture may increase if they get in contact with this sector in their own environment and that is how urban agriculture is essential.

Actions to promote agriculture among the young in Brazil are also in the heart of the Rural Youth Network. This organization has the ultimate goal of encouraging youth to act in the agricultural sector, thus establishing a place where people can exchange experiences of entrepreneurship and sustainable development in rural areas. Their main activities are a young national conference and an exchange programme designed to show that” the countryside as a place of new opportunities and development for current and future generations”.

The last series?

The series grand finale involved one interview with a young professional – and also a mentor –of the agricultural sector. Professor Tatiana Reis highlighted the logistics problem in Brazil when it comes to agriculture alongside poor management skills of the smallholder farmers. In her opinion, in order to increase the participation of young professionals in the sector, there is the need of more dialogue between the young with their future employers, so to equalize their expectations.

Surely, from what we have learned in this series, we were able to identify the most important issues involving this topic in our context and our future actions in order to promote agriculture among youth. For this reason, we, from YPARD Brazil, hope that this is the first of many series about young people and agricultural development.

Why don´t you give it a try?

Picture credit: BEA Institute.