How Can Agriculture be More Attractive to the Youth in Kenya?

Direct communication is key: Kenya’s Future of Farming requires a platform for agriculture industry professionals to discuss what the future of farming requires and how the youth can contribute to sustainable agriculture.

By Dr. Murenga Mwimali

Agriculture has an important role to play in providing employment to the youth in Kenya.

True rural transformation cannot be accomplished in Kenya without empowering the youth in agriculture. Kenya needs to enhance right policy environments, access to capital, innovations and right technologies in support of the youth to engage massively in agriculture and agribusiness. Most importantly, Kenya needs to develop practical business models on selected crop and animal value chains, with examples of budgeted business plans with cost-benefit analysis, and evidence based outreach programmes.

Threats to small-scale farming
There is need for motivation through linkage to financial services that do not require collaterals the youth cannot provide, rural infrastructure and services to facilitate market linkages and enterprise development and partnerships. Investing in the future of the youth and encouraging them to grow their own businesses is key in dealing with the unemployment situation in Kenya. Along with adequate access to technology and innovation as well as motivation from successful startups.

The need to be practical and put the youth at the center as agents of agricultural growth. The conversion of forests to cropland would entail major global environmental costs. The Kenya governments’ existing strategies are officially oriented to promote agricultural growth and food security for the millions of their rural constituents who are small-scale farmers. However, most of these strategies assume unhindered access to land.

In spite of rhetorical support for small-scale farmers, there are increasing concerns that de facto agricultural and land policies have encouraged, and are continuing to encourage the transfer of land to medium- and large-scale interests without due recognition of how this is affecting land access and the viability of agriculture for Kenya’s future generations.

The Government of Kenya leaders should expedite the process by giving up on the vision of smallholder agriculture and favor commercialized large-scale agriculture. However, large-scale agriculture appears not to be the solution. For example, largescale grain production is an extremely weak employer of labour.

Why smallholders need support
Rejuvenating aging farming population through youth employment Enabling decent agriculture and agri-business jobs programme will support in harnessing its huge demographic dividend, while contributing to the rejuvenation of the aging farming population that is average of 60 years in Kenya.

For an integrated approach structured around three main components. We have to let out the money making power of the Kenyan youth in agriculture and value chains. The Government of Kenya must address the challenges that disenfranchise the youth from agriculture such as low productivity, hardship, low levels of mechanization and modernization, lack of rural infrastructure and insufficient local processing and value addition.

In doing that, the Government of Kenya must acknowledge that the youth is not a homogeneous group and there’s a need to use tailored approaches according to the constraints, needs and priorities of various youth groups.

Kenya has unskilled and semi-skilled rural people who are primarily engaged in farming. While they might wish to put down their hoes and walk into white collar office jobs tomorrow, their levels of education and skills will prevent this from happening quickly.

If increasingly populous rural communities were unable to access new land because of increased competition for it from local elites and outside interests, then it is likely that urban poverty and unemployment will be further intensified.

Kenya’s transformation from a primarily semisubsistence, small-scale agrarian economy to a more diversified and productive economy will still require unwavering support for relatively small-scale farmers. Through this, small-scale farmers will be able to participate in and contribute to Kenya’s economic transition rather than be marginalized by it.

There is no doubt that migration from farm to non-farm sectors, and from rural to urban areas will provide the brightest prospects for transforming and modernizing Kenya’s economy. However, it will happen not with fast educational advances and growth in the non-farm job opportunities, which in turn depend on income growth among the millions of families still engaged in smallholder agriculture.

Government policies and public investment plans should be decisive as these will determine the incentives and scope for investment by the private sector, and will largely determine whether the region’s economic transformation is a relatively smooth, robust and peaceful process or a painful and a protracted one.

Attractive Investments
Investments that will make agriculture must be attractive to the youth may include the following proposed ag-technologies that in the long run may be useful namely; precision agriculture, robotic farms swarms, closed crop ecosystems, synthetic biology, and vertical farms. It may take a little longer to realize this concepts of new farming in Kenya, but it is a viable venture that is worth trying. These are discussed below;

Precision agriculture: Farming management based on observing intra-field variations. The use of satellite imagery and advanced sensors, farmers can optimize returns on inputs while preserving resources at larger scales. In addition, understanding of crop variability, geolocation weather data and precise sensors allow improved automated decision-making and complementary planting techniques.

Robotic farm swarms: The combination of dozens or hundreds of agricultural robots with thousands of microscopic sensors, together would monitor, predict, cultivate and extract crops from the land with practically no human intervention. These implementations are already being carried out at a small scale in the developed economies. Engineering involves technologies that extend the reach of agriculture to new means, new places and new areas of the economy. Of particular interest will be synthetic biology, which allows efficiently reprogramming unicellular life to make fuels, byproducts accessible from organic chemistry and smart devices.

Closed ecological systems: Ecosystems that do not rely on matter exchange outside the system. These, closed ecosystems would theoretically transform waste products into oxygen, food and water in order to support life-forms inhabiting the system. The use of closed ecological systems is still limited due to the current technological limitations.

Synthetic biology: Synthetic biology is the programming biology using standardized parts as one programs computers using standardized libraries today. It includes the broad redefinition and expansion of biotechnology, with the ultimate goals of being able to design, build and remediate engineered biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and our environment.

The vertical farms is a natural extension of urban agriculture, vertical farms would cultivate plant or animal life within dedicated or mixed-use skyscrapers in urban settings. Vertical farms could augment natural light using energy-efficient lighting. The advantages are numerous, including year-round crop production, protection from weather, support urban food autonomy and reduced transport costs.

The writter is a scientist / Maize Breeder with KALRO and also WEMA country coordinator