Attracting the Youth to Agriculture

In many countries of Asia, the skills of young people in rural areas are not fully harnessed for the agriculture industry. The youth’s potentials are often overlooked by national as well as local governments and international agencies. Most rural youth are unemployed, underemployed, or forced to work in urban communities. 

Farmers are also getting older with 57 as the average age of workers in the Philippines. It is 54 and 66 for Thailand and Japan, respectively. Meanwhile, older folks do not impart long-established farming techniques to the younger generation anymore. As a result, traditional farming methods are gradually fading as a practice in rural communities. The youth can be the future of agriculture in the region but this may not take place at all given these above-mentioned scenarios.