Why youth participation?

29-06-2022 09:36:31

Youngsters often have a low level of involvement in agriculture and in the decision-making process of farmer’s cooperatives and organisations

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For instance in Kenya, less than 8% of the active members in cooperatives are youth. This posses a great risk to the sustainability of agriculture and cooperatives.

More and more boards of cooperatives are aware that, if they want to safeguard their achievements from the past, investment in farmers of the future is key!

Numerous challenges hinder effective youth participation in the agricultural sector:

Negative perception and attitude to agribusiness
Lack of knowledge ,information and technical skills
Access to land
Access to finance, among others

Click here to watch an insightful argument from a young farmer in Zambia on challenges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT6jRQ8nekM

Agriterra has always highlighted the importance of youth participation in cooperatives and farmer organisations. We strive that at least 50% of our cooperative clients will have active youth councils or similar bodies in place, and that at least 10% of board members of cooperatives will be 35 years old or younger. To achieve this, support to our clients in setup and development of youth chapters or councils is an intrinsic part of our ‘youth in agribusiness’ trajectory.

It is in light of above that Agriterra Kenya supported Starlight Cooperative and Limuru Dairies Cooperative Society to set up youth councils. Starlight is a cooperative being supported under the Climate Resilient Agribusinesses for Tomorrow (CRAFT) project. The goal is to stimulate youth inclusion in leadership, more young farmers and the role of the youth in combating climate change as Climate Smart Agriculture practices champions to increase adoption rate.

Limuru dairies is a cooperative under the FFT program where the cooperative is enthusiastic on the youth topic in leadership, youth as experts and to stimulate more young farmers. The goal is to have youth as an integral part of the cooperative as they grow into processing of their milk to ESL, thus innovative ideas from young farmers in increasing production and marketing is key.