Going places with Agriculture

My name is Norman Munyengwa, a young (23) male agriculture graduate who works as a Youth Development and Livelihoods Officer for the Zimbabwe Farmers Union. 

From 25-28 October 2016, I was honored to attend a high level youth expert meeting dubbed Youth – Feeding the Future: Addressing the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15 to 17 in preparing for and accessing decent work hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at their headquarters in Rome, Italy. The objective of the meeting was to discuss and exchange knowledge, experiences and good practices on addressing the challenges faced by rural youth and seeking ways on how to promote better employment opportunities for them. Nearly half the participants in the room were youths and thus improving youth representation.

During the meeting, we divided ourselves into groups and discussed key challenges that young people within the focus age group face based on the guidelines  from the problem statements and recommendations gathered from key identified themes. Amongst the challenges faced by the youth include the absence of practical skills as a result of an education system that relies heavily on theory rather than on practicals . Additionally, it was singled out that many young people find it very unattractive to work within the field of agriculture. Over the years, the education system of most countries has put forward the case of white collar jobs as the only ones that are suitable for one to succeed in life when in most cases all these white collar jobs heavily rely on the productivity from the agricultural performance. 

Further into the discussions, we discovered that there is a general exclusion of this age group from participating in policy formulation and decision making from family to government level. As such, the input(s) from the said age group is mostly ignored and not heard and this remains a big challenge in many countries. With the minimum age to own or access resources in most countries set at 18, the 15-17 is greatly affected as formal employment opportunities require a minimum age and proper documentation and thus rendering them unemployed unless or otherwise they are being exploited  or exposed to hazardous work which in most cases is the norm. 

15-17 Recommendations 

Some of the recommendations that the meeting agreed on to tackle the several challenges faced by this age group included; the need for multi sectoral partnerships and approaches that should aim to be biased towards implementation of youth policies that incorporate youth voices. Also these partnerships should also strive to bring agricultural awareness programs that are aimed at encouraging high uptake of agricultural education and training within the young population. The expert meeting also agreed that there is need for innovative practical learning in schools, through grassroots agricultural training; and the adoption of ICT and artificial intelligence (use of robots) as a way of attracting youth in agriculture. 

As a panelist on the meeting, I presented on the Exclusion of youths from participating in decision making since I have first-hand information coming from a highly patriarchal society. In Zimbabwe, decision making is the duty of the head of the family and in in this regard most decisions are done without due consultation of all the stakeholders young people included. Additionally, the minimum age for one to vote in elections has been set at 18 and this excludes the focus age group from decision making since they are regarded as children who cannot make their own decisions.  Also,older leaders to stick to power and as such, young people do not get a chance to lead or express their interests. At the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, we are tackling some of these challenges by implementing projects that target young people between the age of 15 and 25 including those that are still in formal education. The projects include the Fit for Life Young Farmers Clubs Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Project, The Farmer-Led Scaling-Up of Conservation Agriculture and the Young Farmers Innovation Lab. Information about these projects can be found at www.zfu.org.zw. and the final expert meeting document will in the coming weeks be published online and promoted at various international platforms, including the Committee on World Food Security, World Day Against Child Labour (12 June 2017) and the Global Child Labour Conference (Argentina, 2017). 

Besides learning about what other countries are doing and contributing to the meeting, I also networked with a lot of influential people from different countries. As they say knowledge is power, the amount of power that I acquired from the meeting will be used to empower young people as well as influence the decision makers to incorporate some of the ideas that I mastered at the meeting. These include the multi sectoral partnerships approach and working with the communities and families to raise awareness on the importance of including the focus age group in decision making.

Last but not least, never had I dreamt of attending such a high level Global expert meeting not only because I am a young recent agricultural graduate, but also because I was the only agricultural expert representing Zimbabwe (and the Zimbabwe Farmers Union). It is upon this rock that I encourage my fellow youth that you do not have to be old for you to be called an expert. Of most importance is what you know and as such we should not underestimate ourselves and hesitate to go for some opportunities because of our age. We should make good use of the internet as most opportunities for young people are shared through the internet and I only got to know about the expert meeting on the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD) website and that was my ticket to Rome.