The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index has just been launched with great fanfare. It intends to serve as a tool for measuring and monitoring women’s roles and their engagement in agriculture with the aim of closing identified “gender empowerment gaps”.  But does the WEA Index fall into the same trap of previous attempts, essentializing women’s roles and failing to get to grips with the social relations at the heart of gender dynamics in agriculture?

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The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change launched their final report, Achieving food security in the face of climate change, at a key event at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London on 28^th March.

The report shows some ways forward for a food system that can reflect limits of food security. It also raises some important questions, including the problems of trade-offs between (corporate) development and the environment, and the nature of the policy processes for implementing the large-scale changes implied by the report.

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This presentation, drawing from Future Agricultures Consortium work on the political economy of policy processes, was made at an agricultural policy dialogue on 23 February 2012 at Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi. The agricultural policy dialogue is a recent initiative created by the Civil Society Network on Agriculture (CISANET) with the objective of providing a platform for stakeholders in the sector to discuss critical policy issues that have a direct bearing on the potential transformation of the sector. Tags: Untagged

by Courtney Paisley, YPARD

When we are talking about engaging youth in agriculture, where do we want them to be engaged?  What type of role are we thinking about for them?

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Agriculture has been brought in from the cold. Hurrah! But clearly that is only half the battle. If anything, debate and disagreement have only intensified: small-scale or large-scale? Commercialisation or self-sufficiency? Global engagement or food sovereignty? GMOs or agroecology? Subsidies or market forces?

In contrast, there are few signs of contestation around the core proposition that investment in agricultural research must increase. Tags: Untagged

By Sithembile N Mwamakamba, FANRPAN

The challenge for the panel on Livelihoods at the Young People, Farming and Food conference was to highlight the benefits and opportunities available for the youth in the agri-food sector. Can young people make a living from agriculture?  Three speakers offered varying perspectives on the question.

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By Francesca della Valle, Youth Employment and Institutional Partnerships Specialist, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Who is a migrant worker? The UN definition is broad, including any people working outside of their home country. The term can also be used to describe someone who migrates within a country in order to pursue work such as for example, seasonal work. Panellists during the labour and migration session at the Young People, Farming and Food conference presented their papers and experiences on labour and migration in countries like Senegal and Ethiopia.

Whatever the exact definition, there are some particular questions that relate to young people and the agrifood sector.

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by Grace Mwaura, MPhil Candidate, Oxford University

The age of a farmer in most African countries is between 50-60 years. In two decades, that generation’s ability to produce food will be limited. Young people are seen as the generation to fill this gap, but the agrifood sector has failed to attract young professionals with new mindsets and innovations. Is there a mismatch in how they are being educated?

This was the question at the education and training panel on the first day of the Young People, Farming and Food conference.

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“Why Aspirations? Aren’t we assuming too much opportunity?” was the hot potato, if you’ll pardon the pun, of question-time during the panel on aspirations and attitudes towards agriculture. Three papers documenting youth aspirations in relation to agriculture, two based on field research in Ghana and one from the Young Lives project in Ethiopia, provided plenty of answers.

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The Young People, Farming and Food conference is taking place in Ghana from 19-21 March. Blogs from the conference will be appearing on this website as the event progresses.

The discussion on livelihoods on day 2, featuring one paper from Ethiopia and two from Kenya, continued to provide additional insights into the income-earning opportunities of young men and women in the agri-food sector.

Tags: youth

Guest post by James Karuga. James is a Kenyan journalist and one of the winners of our journalism competition for reporting on young people, farming and food.

Agriculture’s contribution to Ghana’s economy has nearly halved over the last 20 years. In 1990 the sector contributed 40% but by 2011 it had dipped to 24.4%, according to Dr Samuel Kojo Dapaah of Ghana’s Ministry of Agriculture, speaking at the Young People, Farming and Food conference yesterday.

Agricultural experts in Africa agree this downward trend needs to be reduced if Africa has to overcome her food crisis where 1 in 3 people are nutritionally challenged. As a result, focus has turned to the youth who making up over 60 percent of Africa’s population can play a key role in ensuring Africa is able to feed her people and grow her food sector industry in the future.

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Today is the first day of the Young People, Farming and Food conference in Accra, Ghana. Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies,has written about the conference on his blog:

"The organisers aim for youth and children to participate in the development of this policy agenda.

They are right to do so. Humanity is becoming more aware of the long wave cycles we are caught up in: climate change, natural resource limits, and the peaking of the population in the middle of the 21st century have contributed to this longer view. This means we have an even stronger ethical duty to engage with the next generation in a meaningful way.

But how easy is it to include children and youth in the policy process? And what are the benefits of doing it?"

• Read the full post: "Talkin' to the Next Generation"

You can keep up with more blogs from the conference on this website and on Twitter.

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Ahead of our Young People, Food and Agriculture conference, we're asking a series of questions about the role young people in Africa play in agriculture.

The first question is about young people's role in shaping agricultural policy.

• Complete the poll - question 2
  

Tell us what you think about the issue using the comment box below.

 

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Are people in Africa really moving as much in one direction - into towns and cities - as is commonly believed?

There are more young people in the African population than ever before – approximately 70% of Africa’s one billion people is under the age of 30. Furthermore, continuing a long-term trend, many rural youths are reportedly choosing not to pursue livelihoods in the agriculture sector, especially as farmers. This story of young people apparently turning their back on farming forms a compelling narrative that is linked to others around de-agrarianisation in rural Africa and of entrenched, high and rising youth unemployment. The argument goes that the future for most young people lies not on the farm or even in agriculture, but in new jobs and new sectors in Africa’s burgeoning towns and cities.

Tags: urbanisation, youth, migration

Photo: Pakalinding farmers, The Gambia by gerrypops on Flickr

Has anyone yet properly analysed the human resources that will be needed in the agricultural sector in Africa in 10 or 15 years? And if not, why not?

Let me explain. If a government concludes that over a given planning horizon there will likely be a shortage of secondary school teachers, it might create additional incentives (bursaries, one-off grants etc) to attract young graduates to a one-year teacher training course. Similarly, if a manufacturing sector expects that a shortage of qualified engineers will hinder its future competitiveness, it might push government to expand the teaching capabilities of university engineering departments and then work to make engineering a more attractive career choice in the eyes of young people.

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START’s 2011 Grants for Global Environmental Change (GEC) Research in Africa are one-year projects in support of science-based research to build the capacity of individual scientists and their affiliated institutions in Africa.

• 2012 Call for Proposals: Grant Awards for Global Environmental Change Research in Africa
• Meet the 2011 Global Environmental Change Research Teams in Africa

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by Stephen Spratt, Institute of Development Studies

On 6 February 2012 the Future Agricultures Consortium and IDS hosted a workshop on food price volatility and financial markets. We posed three questions:

Why does volatility matter?
What impact, if any, do financial speculators have?
What, if anything, should be done about this?

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A new book, Contested Agronomy, by FAC members Jim Sumberg and John Thompson, will be published in March by Earthscan (Routledge). It's part of the STEPS Centre's Pathways to Sustainability book series.

The dramatic increases in food prices experienced over the last four years, and their effects of hunger and food insecurity, as well as human-induced climate change and its implications for agriculture, food production and food security, are key topics within the field of agronomy and agricultural research.

Contested Agronomy: Agricultural Research in a Changing World addresses these issues by exploring key developments since the mid-1970s. The book focuses in particular on the emergence of the neoliberal project and the rise of the participation and environmental agendas, taking into consideration how these have had profound impacts on the practice of agronomic research in the developing world especially over the last four decades. Tags: sustainable agriculture

I will be speaking at a workshop in Nanyuki, Kenya on February 23, on the topic of adaptation to climate change in arid and semi-arid lands. Below are some of the key points arising from my research.

Pastoralist communities in the Garba Tula area of northern Kenya are turning to alternative or complimentary income generation activities in the face of ravaging drought that has resulted in the death and deterioration of livestock productivity, significantly diminishing household income and increasing food insecurity.

Tags: Kenya, pastoralism

The African Union Commission is seeking proposals for research focusing on the following thematic priorities articulated in Africa’s Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action (CPA) and its Lighthouse Projects: (a) Post-harvest and Agriculture, (b) Renewable and Sustainable Energy, and (c) Water and Sanitation in Africa. The programme is financed through the Financing Agreement between the European Commission and the ACP Group of States under the ACP Research for Sustainable Development Program of the 10^th EDF Intra-ACP Envelop.

Ref: HRST/ST/AURG/CALL2/2012/EuropeAid/132-331/M/ACT/ACP

Tags: Grants, Funding