Agriculture is still the primary occupation of more than half of Indian population asserting importance of this sector in various socioeconomic aspects of the country. Gross Value Added by agriculture, forestry and fishing is estimated at Rs 18.55 lakh crore (US$ 265.51 billion) in FY19 (PE). As was once said by Mahatma Gandhi that to become self-reliant, rural economy has to be developed, only then we will be able to give employment to rural youth.
India being the youngest nation in the world has massive youth resource to offer to agriculture sector but unfortunately, youth participation in agriculture is declining. India is expected to have 34.33 per cent share of youth in the total population by 2020, which is a huge reserve of human resource and potential.
Hardly 5 per cent of the youth are engaged in agriculture though over 60 per cent of the rural people derive their livelihood fully or partly from farming and its related activities. Clearly, the modern youth are disenchanted with agriculture and are shunning it as a profession.
Present scenario shows that the agriculture needs the young work force, so involvement of the Youth in agriculture is must, reason behind that the majority of the farmers in Indian context are more than 35 years and they are not able to adopt new technologies and methods of practices due to lack of education and awareness.
Most of the farmers preferred traditional methods of farming and were not aware of improved methods. The farming population is, consequently, getting old. It bodes ill for the future of agriculture and so involvement of youth in agriculture is vital, as if trained in the trade, youth can be a game changer in India Economic Reforms.
AROH Foundation has been putting in efforts and attempting hard to reform agricultural scenario within more than 70 villages in the states of Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya & Uttar Pradesh. While working for HDFC Bank’s Holistic Rural Development project Parivartan, national level NGO AROH Foundation strongly believed that youth involvement is strongly realized for agricultural reform so that it can keep pace with changing global economy
Kaushal Giri (27 years, son of Santosh Giri, Village Rangpur, Bulandshahr) lost his job in a factory of NOIDA and had to return to his village during lockdown crisis, had gone clueless about the future of his family with 2 small children in it. Not just Kaushal, around 300 more youth, who lost their jobs in COVID scare, had gone into oblivion after returning back to Rangpur.
In addition to bringing in new and organic methods of farming, AROH has been training and engaging maximum youth in new innovative farming techniques. Within the projects, the short term and long term plans in agriculture has also been put in place to deal with the formidable problem that has been caused by Covid-19 today, so that the youth who have returned from the cities as “Migrant Laborers” could be engaged in agriculture. Kaushal was engaged in Nutrition Gardening.
Within this key intervention to combat malnutrition, food security and ensure sustainable livelihood seeds were distributed through SHGs and kitchen gardens were created on small land near hand-pumps or where families were disposing of waste water. These kitchen gardens were meant to increase food diversity in the diets of the participating families and reduce reliance on the market for nutrients like fruits and vegetables especially during COVID lockdown crisis.
Along with personal nutrition supplement, these kitchen gardens produced enough to sell and earn decently. With his first set of yield with brinjal, Kaushal is earning around Rs 400-500 per day, which is way better than what he used to get NOIDA, that too after day long toil. He was sensitized towards how he was the owner of his agri business. In his own words, he says, “I feel at peace being back to my village, earning more than what I was getting in that suffocating factory in NOIDA, after toiling hard throughout the day. And icing on the cake is, I own my enterprise. Now just like me, many other youngsters have joined our fathers and taken up farming as our profession, looking at the better profits. AROH has been instrumental to change our thinking and proving the vision through action.”
Dr Neelam Gupta, Founder President & CEO of AROH Foundation, explained the initiative as, “Due to lack of facilities rural youth after securing government job or other type of employment used to migrate to cities for want of better future but now this trend has somewhat reduced. But a lot of reforms still need to be done. Rural youth will only be diverted towards agriculture profession if it becomes economically attractive. Rural youths by way of blending traditional as well as modern agriculture technologies can bring revolution in agriculture if properly supported by government policies.
“Successful progressive farmers like Pappu shall act as role model for the rural youths to adopt the profession of agriculture as their source of livelihood. These successful young farmers should be properly recognized by society like cricketers which motivate them to perform better in agriculture field. We, at AROH are trying that in addition to on-farm activities, non-farm activities are also promoted in rural areas so that rural youths may have access to diversified source of income. Thus it will not be wrong to say that future agriculture development will largely depend upon the contribution of rural youths and for this to happen we have to make agriculture occupation a rewarding and profit oriented activity on priority basis.”, she said.
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