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Nigeria’s rural youth are facing various challenges in agriculture, with limited job opportunities outside the sector. Using qualitative focus group discussions and individual interviews with youth in four communities in two Nigerian states, the paper reflects on nuanced differences in perceptions of opportunities, coping mechanisms and overall resilience of youth in rural Nigeria, as well as differential access to information, inputs and irrigation based on age, gender and community. We apply the GCAN framework, to illustrate the factors that shape resilience pathways in the context of climate change and other shocks and stressors. Many of the constraints rural youth face are faced by other groups, including lack of finance, farm inputs and modern equipment for production and processing. Yet, youth face higher and specific hurdles related to lack of capital, experience and a strong social capital and networks that would facilitate coping with climatic and other shocks and improving their livelihoods. Young women in particular have less access to information and irrigation, and are less likely to benefit from cooperative memberships. Nevertheless, young men and women have higher resilience compared to older groups in terms of health, mobility and ability to migrate, as well as easier access to the internet as a source of information. Youth can better build resilience and a network and receive government assistance when part of a cooperative. Nevertheless, a larger enabling environment in the sector is needed, to improve roads, access to markets, information, inputs and equipment to support young farmers who cannot leave the agriculture sector. A promising factor is that many young men and women realize the importance of agriculture and aspire to become successful in the sector.
Engaging burgeoning youth populations in developing country agriculture is seen as an important strategy toward effective, efficient, and sustainable food system transformation. Yet the policy, institutional, technological, and capability barriers and ways to overcome them for successful participation of youth in agriculture are not fully understood. We use a conceptual framework that identifies key pathways to prosperity for youth and classifies contextual and driving factors that contribute to the success of youth engagement in agriculture. The framework comprises four broad categories of strategic interventions: policy and socioeconomic environment; institutional; technological/business infrastructure; and individual skills and capacities. In the context of this framework, we then present insights from cases of youth participation in agriculture in five countries: Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. The countries and cases were purposively selected as part of ongoing research on youth engagement in agriculture. Policies and strategies play an important role in creating an enabling environment for youth engagement in agriculture, including by fostering transparency and accountability in the policy system and promoting youth engagement in the private sector through agricultural extension and other services. Institutions and intermediaries provide financial support, training, and access to market for youth entrepreneurs. Support in these areas should be strengthened. Systems approaches, such as multi-stakeholder platforms, provide holistic support to young agripreneurs (entrepreneurs in agriculture), but require effective coordination. Similarly, information and communication technologies can play a facilitating role by providing platforms to network and receive updated market information but need to be significantly scaled up. Individual capacities can drive youth engagement in agriculture and agripreneurship but must continue to be built up through expanded education and training on technical and functional skills. As policymakers and program managers search for interventions that can promote youth involvement in agriculture in their own countries, the insights from the five countries examined that are presented in this paper may be useful for identifying context-specific challenges and pathways to successful youth engagement in agriculture in their own countries. The framework presented here can be applied to study youth engagement issues in any country or in sub-national, decentralized contexts to generate evidence to guide the design of youth-in-agriculture development programs. There is a need to support, strengthen, and implement the driving factors identified in this paper for expanding youth engagement in agriculture.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of agrifood systems to shocks and stresses and led to increased global food insecurity and malnutrition. Action is needed to make agrifood systems more resilient, efficient, sustainable and inclusive. The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 presents country-level indicators of the resilience of agrifood systems. The indicators measure the robustness of primary production and food availability, as well as physical and economic access to food. They can thus help assess the capacity of national agrifood systems to absorb shocks and stresses, a key aspect of resilience. The report analyses the vulnerabilities of food supply chains and how rural households cope with risks and shocks. It discusses options to minimize trade-offs that building resilience may have with efficiency and inclusivity. The aim is to offer guidance on policies to enhance food supply chain resilience, support livelihoods in the agrifood system and, in the face of disruption, ensure sustainable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to all.
This illustrated volume identifies the challenges and opportunities facing food and agriculture in the context of the 2030 Agenda, presents solutions for a more sustainable world and shows how FAO has been working in recent years to support its Member Nations in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable methods of cultivation are threatening agriculture and food security in the highlands of East Africa. In response, economists and other development professionals have turned their attention to combating the pr
Social research has provided critical insights into understanding gender and generational gaps and the ways that power relations create differentiated access to agricultural and livestock technologies and services. Many of these technologies and services, such as improved feed options (grass-legume associations, silvo-pastoral systems), improved animal genetics, health and welfare, grazing management and associated water and soil health, and manure management, have the potential to improve livelihoods, sustainability, food security, and generational transfer dynamics. Their adoption contributes to mitigating many of the impacts the livestock sector has on the environment through, for example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation, increasing biodiversity, restoration, and land sparing. Likewise, their adoption helps producers adapt to climate change.
This open access book examines the interactions between India’s economic development, agricultural production, and nutrition through the lens of a “Food Systems Approach (FSA).” The Indian growth story is a paradoxical one. Despite economic progress over the past two decades, regional inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition problems persist. Simultaneously, recent trends in obesity along with micro-nutrient deficiency portend to a future public health crisis. This book explores various challenges and opportunities to achieve a nutrition-secure future through diversified production systems, improved health and hygiene environment and greater individual capability to access a balanced diet contributing to an increase in overall productivity. The authors bring together the latest data and scientific evidence from the country to map out the current state of food systems and nutrition outcomes. They place India within the context of other developing country experiences and highlight India’s status as an outlier in terms of the persistence of high levels of stunting while following global trends in obesity. This book discusses the policy and institutional interventions needed for promoting a nutrition-sensitive food system and the multi-sectoral strategies needed for simultaneously addressing the triple burden of malnutrition in India.
Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.
This report provides an overview of a study conducted in the NENA region in 2015-2016 in partnership with FAO, CIRAD, CIHEAM-IAMM and six national teams, each of which prepared a national report. In the six countries under review in the NENA region (Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan and Tunisia), agriculture is carried out primarily by small-scale family farmers, the majority of whom run the risk of falling into the poverty trap, largely due to the continuous fragmentation of inherited landholdings. As such, the development of small-scale family farming can no longer be based solely on intensifying agriculture, as the farmers are not able to produce sufficient marketable surplus due to the limited size of their landholdings. An approach based strictly on agricultural activity is also insufficient (as small-scale family farms have already diversified their livelihoods with off-farm activities). In fact, developing small-scale farming cannot be achieved by focusing strictly on t he dimension of production.
This first International Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers called for inclusive research and education systems to facilitate innovation; robust bridging institutions; support to family farmers; and integrated policies and increased investments to create an enabling environment for innovation and scaling up. Innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context. Innovation in agriculture cuts across all dimensions of the production cycle along the entire value chain - from crop, forestry, fishery or livestock production to the management of inputs and resources to market access. The symposium provided inspiration for innovation actors and decision makers to unlock the potential of innovation to drive socio-economic growth, ensure food and nutrition security, alleviate poverty, improve resilience to changing environments and thereby achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.