PROMOTING YOUTH ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYMENT IN AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SYSTEMS
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)FAO
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What is it?
This report by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS)'s High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on food security and nutrition, underscores the urgent need to make agri-food systems more appealing to young people to secure the future of global food security and nutrition.
The report puts forward recommendations such as
- improving youth-focused social protection programmes,
- labour laws and regulations, and
- young people's access to resources (land, forests, fisheries etc), finance, markets, digital technologies, knowledge and information.
- Supporting youth-led start-up initiatives is also important, and requires a supportive policy environment.
- Policies and initiatives to protect and strengthen youth engagement and employment in agri-food systems also need to be anchored in rights, equity, action and recognition.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Unemployment rates for youth are three times higher than for adults in all regions of the world, and a vast majority of unemployed youth are young women.
- Agri-food systems, if made more appealing and equitable to youth, are a large, untapped reservoir of employment opportunities. Particularly in the Global South, agri-food systems are already the largest employer of young people.
- The importance of focusing actions in developing countries, where almost 88 percent of the world's 1.2 billion youth live, particularly in Africa, where over 70 percent of youth subsist on $2 per day or less.
- Youth engagement and employment in sustainable agri-food systems is simultaneously a goal to be realized and a means for the radical transformation of agri-food systems, the achievement of the SDGs, and of economic well-being.