Sustainable farming making its way with schooled youth

A recent illustrative piece of such tendency is a group of 71 young farmers from 12 wards of Kahama municipality in Shinyanga Region who are taking up swathes of land for the growing of food and cash crops have been provided with free farm inputs.

Officials have explained this as meant for those people’s wellbeing and the agro-sector push as a whole, seemingly related to assisting special groups.

It is reported that the free supply of farm inputs to youthful farmers began in the 2018/2019 financial year.

It is said part of the idea was to boost employment in the farming sector, including by clearing off the streets youths willing to lead gainful lives.

Authorities say that 172 youths have thus far benefited from the farm inputs support, valued at 115.7m/-, with expectations that more will turn up for consideration if they are ready to take up rural life.

A municipal extension officer spoke on these efforts in a presentation on the distribution of farm inputs as subsidy to the youths and other demonstration farmers.

They key element in getting youths to take up agriculture is to allocate funds from local councils’ internal revenues for purchasing farm inputs for free distribution to young farmers.

There is a policy that youths take up five acres or more while the harvests belong to them, not the councils, which is in effect having councils taking up parentage of sorts – the equivalent of sponsorship.

Irrespective of what has already been achieved in this effort, what is salutary about this particular effort is that it provides a non-industrial solution to youth unemployment by potentially making farm work usable for that segment of the population.

Were there other agencies concerned over the matter, they could make additions either on a subsidy and participatory basis as with the free inputs or as soft-term loans. This could take the form of building materials, enabling small-scale animal husbandry, etc.

Looking at the data, the municipal council efforts seems impressive enough, as they have provided youths with 680 bags of fertiliser, 1,500 kgs of quality maize seeds, 300 kgs of sunflower seeds and 225 litres of farm pesticides to the 71 young farmers, all costing 66.8m/-.

A total of 11 villages are included in this particular scheme, and this is just for one municipal-cum-rural administrative entity, with the district authorities saying that the farmers will be appropriately supervised by ward extension officers.

This administrative part is definitely useful, though it is not really the big news, as otherwise public authorities generally ought to see how such efforts can be supported, enhanced and extended.

Discovering how to bring youths into agriculture is a potential response to urban growth crises and could eventually need greater funding than merely depending on auxiliary council cash. This mode of financing is a good start but should not be the limit.