Iam in Agriculture, Because We Are!

Let’s Leverage Youth success through engagement in agriculture as a societal means to success. I can…! I have to…! I am in Agriculture, and I can find agriculture more attractive with support from my society. Empowered by ICTs, inspired by society, I am a motivated young professional to be successful through agriculture. Because we act together and ‘we are’, engagement in agriculture will forever remain my successful path to sustainable success. It does not matter the ‘portrayed’ class of this sector, what matters is my success and I am determined to prove that the notion that the agriculture sector is for the uneducated, not profitable…….. ‘is a myth’. If our attitude goes towards this direction, we are definitely making agriculture real! Agriculture as a means to engage young people in sustainable development A youth perspective means that young people are actors and resources in development cooperation. Poverty can be reduced once young people have the chance to have an impact on their life situations. When young people are actors and resources in development cooperation, and when their experience is put into use, they and adults together are able to achieve better results. It is of particular importance for youths to be actors and not made passive recipients if they have to be meaningfully,economically and socially integrated into society. Youth unemployment is a serious problem around the world, with high rates of unemployment in developing countries. Creating job opportunities is a recommendable step forward which development practitioners are struggling to bring to reality. However, engagement of young people in entrepreneurship for self-employment and job creation is the most preferred and highly promoted approach towards reducing the high rate of unemployment, which in turn is believed would reduce poverty. Meaningful ventures have been sort to ensure this is achieved while ensuring sustainability socially, economically, environmentally and otherwise. Agriculture is one such a sector, which has been identified and promoted worldwide, and it is evident that this sector delivers the desired achievement. Since many youths have not found this sector friendly to them, and have not fully utilised the opportunities the sector brings forth with, the world over is struggling to find means of making the agriculture sector attractive to the youth. It isn’t an easy task. Governments and civil societies have come up with favourable policies to ensure agriculture becomes attractive, though implementation has not been up to the expectations especially in developing countries. Young professionals in the 21st century Lack of skills and access to opportunities, is the cause of poverty for many youths. Empowering young people to engage in productive livelihoods are consistent with the first of the Millennium Development Goals, which is concerned with poverty eradication. The ability to engage in a livelihood should also be viewed as a vital life skill and a great contribution to the achievement of goal three(3) of the Education For All agenda- providing young people and adults with access to quality life-skills programmes. Young people should be encouraged to perceive themselves as actors responsible for their own lives. While encouraging independent thought, creativity and initiative, the benefits of collaborative work should be demonstrated among the youth. Improving education for the world of work can help improve the income of poverty-stricken farmers, and many other artisans, provide citizens with more choices in their lives, help alleviate poverty, and help empower individuals who would otherwise be marginalised. How societal goals and means affect life goals and aspirations for young people - bridging the gap Life goals can be defined as an individual’s conception of what they would like to be or achieve, and their conception of the proper means for achieving this. Majority of the youth would like to live as they like – responsible for their own lives and able to determine their success once given necessary support, work on behalf of society and respond to national or world call to action. Youth have clearly expressed the wish not to enjoy without sweat, rather, they cherish the traditional values of hard work, personal ability and a good education as means to achieving life goals, and the values of independence and free spirit are also held. The Achievement of life goals for the youth means being successful. Life goals of the youth reflect societal objectives, societal prescriptions of the means for achieving the objectives, and the degree of individual acceptance of both the means and goals. The extent to which individual youths accept the prescribed goals and prescribed means reflects the degree to which they are integrated into society. It is evident that an overwhelming majority of the youth believes in society’s prescribed means for achieving goals. Young people have different feelings about work, and these include taking care of family and relatives, earning money, for self fulfilment, and duty to society. They are understood to work in order to fulfil both family and individual obligations. Earning money is probably the simplest way to fulfilling obligations. The relationship between societal goals and societal means of achieving the goals, and youth life goals and work attitudes has a great impact on the attractiveness of agriculture to the youth and their meaningful engagement in this sector. However, little has been done by society to address this issue. For instance, without agricultural knowledge and skills, access to land and agricultural inputs support, young people cannot be productive in the agriculture sector. More so, the absence of young people’s participation in agriculture research for development and inadequate means of research results dissemination leaves the youth uninformed, de-motivated, and uncompetitive. It is evident that youths in conformity and innovatively accept societal objectives and means of achieving those objectives. Thus, once sustainable development economically, socially, environmentally and otherwise becomes the goal of a particular society as every society desires, engagement in agriculture should be one of the top priority societal means of achieving this goal to ensure success. This means that all factors that would ensure this becomes a fruitful means such as availability of agricultural land, provision of agricultural knowledge and skills, agricultural inputs support, participation in agricultural research and results dissemination, supportive agribusiness models for income retention and profit generation, supportive trading environment, and otherwise, should be put in place. Once local communities and society at large puts in place engagement in agriculture as a societal means of achieving success, youth life goals and means of achieving this success will be a reflection of what the society has put in place. The relevance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) - Harnessing young people, society, and agriculture The diverse tools that ICTs make available to young people, comes with opportunities that would ensure they successfully engage in agriculture for sustainable development. ICTs provide tools for learning and communication for young people, developing their skills and knowledge in agriculture, hence meaningfully engaging them as professionals in this sector. Skills development and knowledge acquisition much needed to meaningfully engage young people in agricultural research for development, enhanced agriculture production and entrepreneurship, can all be empowered by ICT tools such as computers, mobile phones, radio and TV, Web 2.0 tools and other internet resources. With the help of ICTs, young people whose life goals and aspirations are actually affected by the goals and means of achieving such by society they belong to, usually through innovative acceptance, can belong to, collaborate with, and engage in society’s development. Through ICTs togetherness, through communication and collaboration can be achieved, creating communities of success, while empowering, motivating and inspiring each other, affirming that societies have to work together for common success. The basic needs of every community required to qualify it to overcome poverty, start with having food on the table and later an income to procure other essentials. Agriculture directly provides food for families and the surplus can generate an income to meet other needs. Engagement in agriculture proves to be relevant and fits into the means of achieving life goals of young people by means of providing for themselves and their families, which has been proved by many youths to be the obligation needed to be met in order to be successful. Thus we can leverage youth success by engaging in agriculture as means of achieving societal objectives -success. However, engagement in agriculture should be sustainable not only socially and economically but environmentally as well.