Conclusion
ASKED how can the youth be made interested with agriculture, he said that career orientation in schools should include actual visits to modern farms to show the students that farming is lucrative and “it’s not all dirtying-yourself-stuff.”
“Visibility campaign of agriculture for the youth, schools can even include elective subjects in high schools even in urban areas that discuss agriculture and farming” he also said.
Barañao also said that many of his friends have repeatedly urged him to shift to another course, like accounting or information technology but firmly explained that he is “decided” with farming.
“Food. Survival. Healthy living. These are the images that comes to my mind whenever I hear the word agriculture. Nothing is more important than that,” he added.
In an interview, Felino P. Lansigan, a professor of statistics at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), said that “there is really a decline on the enrollees of agricultural courses, the students are more into computer related or technology related courses such as IT, computer engineering,” adding that this is because the youth see farming as all hard physical work.
“UPLB has a new program, like agro-biotech, still very much related to agriculture, for the students to realize that there is more to agriculture, especially now that the move is toward modernization of the agriculture.”
He also said that on the average, Filipino farmers are now 57 years of age, and that there should really be a concerted effort to convince the young people to engage in food production.
The lack of new generation ready to shoulder the yoke of farming is not unique to the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the United States of America, where farmers are generally believed to be better off compared with their Asian counterparts, farming is also being relegated to a much older population.
Currently, the average age of the American farmer is 58.3 years, while 30 years ago, the average age was 50.3 years.
“It’s a major problem,” Lindsey Lusher Shute, representative for the National Young Farmers Coalition, a US-based organization, said in a statement available online. “Between the last two censuses, there’s only an increase of 3,000 young farmers. Tom Vilsak, the secretary of Agriculture, is calling for 100,000 new farmers,” She added.
According to Shute, the main problem is the very limited financial incentive for young people to choose farming as a profession. “There’s just no way enough young people enter agriculture to replace the number of retiring farmers unless there is a very clear career path,” she said.
The group is calling the US Congress to introduce legislation that would include farmers to the definition of “public service student loan forgiveness” which currently covers teachers, doctors, nurses, and non-profit employees.
If approved, after 10 years of income-driven repayments, the rest of the student debt is written-off, allowing young farmers to focus on starting their businesses without the burden of payments.
Asked whether a similar legislation could work in the Philippines, Virginia Benosa, campaigner for Greenpeace Philippines, said that it might, except that the US has a wider swaths of farm lands and being archipelago in nature, agricultural lands are divided into separate islands which are currently experiencing environmental abuse through a variety of “irresponsible practices.”
Instead, “Greenpeace is calling for the government to make farming more profitable and sustainable, by encouraging ecological agriculture,” Benosa told BusinessMirror.
The group calls for the government support to the “producers, or farmers themselves” and allow them to deal directly with consumers to maximize their profit she explained.
To maximize food production and yields, the group is also calling for the minimize use of land for bioenergy as this limits the available land for food production.
Under its recently launched program #IAmHampaslupa, Greenpeace is encouraging young Filipinos to engage in food-production business or activities. “Now more than ever, with the challenges brought about by the changing climate, ageing farmers, nutrition security, disaster response and environmental protection, we need comprehensive, holistic and responsive plicies on food and agriculture that can act to the growing needs and concern of Filipinos,” she also said.
The group used the derogatory hampaslupa, which literally means hitting the land or toiling the soil to release it from the historical negative connotation.
The IDC paper concluded that agriculture’s lack of appeal to young people reflects the lack of effective public investment in small holder farming and the public infrastructure needed to link to markets. This also include constrained access to land and uncertain access to inputs among young people, including land fragmentation in many countries in past few decades and social change resulting from rapid increases in mass education provision but which have often resulted in a perceived decline in the status of agriculture.
However, the research also found out that agriculture could be made more appealing to young people, with the right kinds of measures and support, which include providing the right kinds of training at appropriate levels to reflect the demands of the job market and broader public investment.
Also, farmers, across all generations, need support for accessing markets and to improve productivity, including access to inputs and in the use of modern technologies, the study said.
Like this story online via the BusinessMirror Millennials Universe (BMMU) Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Millennial-Universe/435594193285671. Follow BMMU on Twitter via @millennial_U or Instagram (type Millennial Universe). Email comments or story to millennialuniverse@yahoo.com and the editor at dennis.estopace@gmail.com.