Food crop sector in Sri Lanka: Any Role
for Youth?
By Sisira
Ekanayaka
Sri Lanka has been an agricultural predominant
county over the centuries but the level of importance of the sector has changed
over the year. In one hand, agricultural contribution to the Gross Domestic
Products (GDP) has been decreasing gradually over the years. However,
importance of the agriculture sector has been increasing remarkably in terms of
food security of the nation, increasing nutrition level and reducing poverty.
The government of Sri Lanka, has given high priority
to improve the agriculture sector. The government policy document “Mahinda Chinthana-2010: Vision for the
Future” stated the necessity of the improvement of the sector.
Therefore, Ministry of Agriculture and its’
affiliated institutions have been implementing number of projects and programmes
towards sustainable agriculture such as establishment of commercial farms,
establishment of agro-parks and agri-entrepreneurship, fertilizer subsidy
programme and Api wawamu-Rata nagamu
(lets cultivate and built up the nation). On the other hand, though the
government has given priority to attract youth to agriculture, there seems to
be many challenges such as negative attitude towards agriculture and lack of
information which causes to push them away from farming.
Youth
in Agriculture
Definition of youth varied across countries as well
as culture. The United Nations defined youth as ‘persons those within the age
range of 15 to 24 years’ (Higgins,1997). Sri Lanka National Youth Service
Council defined youth as persons within age range of 13-29 years (Ibargüen,
2004).
Global trend shows that young household heads in
rural areas are more likely to engage in non-farm activities than their older
household heads. Also, youth who engage in farming activities tend to earn
higher income from their agricultural activities in comparison to older
farmers. They earn such income through new crop varieties, adoption of new
technology and post-harvest practices or following more profitable ways of
marketing. Sri Lankan situation is similar to the global trend. As revealed by
Damayanthi and Rambodagedara (2013), 70 percent of the youth are engaged in
agriculture related various activities in prominent agricultural districts. Of
them, however, around 39 percent engage in agriculture full time while around
40 percent and 26 percent engage in agriculture as family labourers and part
time occupants respectively. Only 7.3 percent are engaged in agriculture
related industries or business but most of them are small scale or home based
industries or business. Majority of them can be categorized as self-employment
activities such as maintain a grinding mill, vegetable or fruit stall and plant
nursery.
Similar to the global trend, great majority of the
youth who engage in full time farming or wish to engage in full time
farming in the future are less educated
and without qualifications to do another job, poor having a small family income and people who live in remote
rural areas (Damayanthi and Rambodagedara, 2013). In other words most of them
do not have another alternative for livelihood except farming.
The reasons for doing farming as a full time
occupation are socio-cultural factors for a great majority of the youth. They
are either bound with family responsibilities or have bitter experiences from
urban centric jobs which they engaged in their early 20s. Also, most of them
like to enjoy (mentally and physical or environmental) freedom at their
village. Only 16 percent of the youth mentioned that they have the possibility
to earn good income from farming and based on such situation they were selected
the farming as a full time occupation (Damayanthi and Rambodagedara, 2013).
Challenges
Regarding agricultural development, four factors of
production are crucially influential. Those factors are land, labour, capital
and knowledge (including management and entrepreneurship skills).
In prominent
agricultural districts in Sri Lanka, 40 percent of the youth do not like to
engage in full time farming in future. This is due to number of reasons such as
uncertainty of market or low income/profit, difficulty to fulfill the basic
needs such as land, finance, labour, inputs and water, not matching with
educational qualifications, lack of social recognition, unavailability of job
security, alternative income generation activities being more successful and
unavailability/lack of awareness/ training on farming or not introducing modern
technology (Damayanthi and Rambodagedara, 2013).
Around 71 percent of the agricultural lands plots in
Sri Lanka is less than 2
acres . Furthermore, these lands are subject to
fragmention due to population pressure. Therefore, the young generation does
not have enough land resources to engage in farming in a profitable way. On the
other hand, profit of the production does not merely depend on the land size
but it depends on agro ecological conditions, crop, demand and supply as well
as marketing channels. For example,
though youth can earn enough income from ¼ acres of potato or other cash crop
cultivation in Nuwara Eliya district, farmers can not earn such income from
cultivating crops in 2-3 acres in Anuradhapura or Monaragala districts.
Therefore, farmers- specially young farmers- who wish to engage in farming as a
livelihood, tend to be cultivated in large scale but scarcity of cultivable
land is a crucial problem to them all over the country.
Since majority of the youth do not have capital, it
is a crucial issue for a beginner in the Sri Lankan farming society. A large
number of state and commercial banks, micro finance institutions as well as
some of the non-governmental organizations provide credit or finance for
agricultural purposes. At present, This is mainly due to banks not being ready to take risk releasing credit for a
beginner who does not have sufficient experience, good transaction history with
the banks or capital or collateral for the loan. Even youth cannot get a loan
from the ‘Farmer Banks’ even though the bank is established with the aiming the
farmers.
Lack of awareness of modern technology
and weak extension service badly affects on the youth contribution to the
agricultural sector. New generation is more likely to practice modern
agricultural technology which provides high income for them.
Market facilities are one of the major factors
influencing youth in agriculture. As recent research revealed, majority of the
youth (58 percent) is not willing to engage in farming. The major reasons were uncertainty
of the market and low income earned from
farming. This proves that the failure or uncertainty of the market
adversely affects the youth engagement in agricultural practices.
Social recognition is one crucial factor influencing
youth decisions regarding employment selection. Girls and their parents are not
interested in selecting a farmer to get married. On the other hand, Sri Lankan
culture creates some negative attitudes related to occupations such as
“government servant is a master of the general public”,“a person who engage in
farming is poor, uneducated, voiceless, helpless and haven’t qualifications to
find any other job” and “agriculture is dirty job with less income”. Such
negative attitudes influence youth and it helps to move them away from farming.
Possibilities
There is a number of possibilities to attract youth
for agriculture and to ensure their well-being. Most important possibility is
that the government interest towards the development of the agriculture sector
and attracts youth for the sector. Second possibility is that, in general,
young generation in Sri Lanka is better educated than their parents. Therefore,
they are more likely to be open to change and adopt to new technologies.
Third, there is an increasing demand for organic and
traditional food commodities in the market. In addition, there are many youth
who are aware of the adverse effects of the agrochemical usage and high demand
as well as profit.
Recommendations
1. To
promote youth in agriculture, the government should introduce and implement
group/community system including development of farming and entrepreneurship.
2. To
fulfill the gap between financial facilities and the necessity of the youth a
special loan scheme should be introduced.
References
Damayanthi,
M.K.N. and Gamage, D., (2011). Transformation
of Smallholder Agricultre Sector in Sri Lanka: An Annotated Compendium of
Statistics, Colombo: Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training
Institute
Damayanthi,
M.K.N. and Rambodagedara, R.m.M.H.K., (2013). Factors Affecting Less Youth Participation in Smallholder Agriculture
in Sri Lanka, Colombo: Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training
Institute
Department
of Census and Statistics, (2002). Agricultural
Census-2002, Colombo: Department of Census and Statistics
Higgins,
N., (1997). The Challenges of Youth
Unemployment, Geneva: International Labour Officer
Ibargün,
C., (2004). Poverty and Youth Issues in
Sri Lanka; Briefing Paper Series, Poverty brief 5-2004, Colombo; Centre for
Poverty Analysis
Ministry of Finance and Planning, (2010). Mahinda Chinthan 2010: Vision for the Future,
Colombo: Ministry of Finance and Planning.
It’s this article try to explain youth participation in agriculture development its is explain youth participation, agriculture crisis, and market system very well. But in this article not explain that what is the role of government for develop the youth participation for agriculture.
ReplyDeleteTHAVARASA THARSHAN
MDS/2014/22
The writer, presents an article with a set of information in relation to some barriers that discourage the youth participation in agriculture. This is applicable to Sri Lanka too. I totally agree with the statement; “ Specially young farmers who wish to engage in farming as a livelihood, tend to be cultivate in large scale but scarcity of cultivatable land is a crucial problem”. This is seen in Sri Lanka. One major factor for this is the ownership of the cultivatable lands. In fact, the people who own lands do not cultivate and those who like farming are not the owners of lands. However, there are deserted lands due to multiple ownership too. However, if the government can introduce policies to overcome this imbalance the country will have more developed agricultural sector.
ReplyDeleteP.H.Premawathie
Mr Ekanayaka Food crop sector in Sri Lanka any Role for Youth, it is most of the time discuss in the country. Sri Lanka is an Agriculture base country since our ancient time. Therefore in our country people have only the highest level of knowledge in this sector. And also system of the imp structure in Agriculture is good. So that we have most strength, develop for your considering youth farming engaging factors. The article covered that area in the above topic. I gathered lots of information from this.
ReplyDeleteUpul Weerawardana
MDS/C03/03
This is a good article revealing a prevalent problem of development economics worldwide. From the ancient times, agriculture played a prominent role in the Sri Lankan economy. Thus the base financial source was the income through agricultural activities. But at the moment it is diversified and the prominence given towards agriculture has been gradually declining. Lesser participation of youth or the main players in an economy is one of the key issues behind this scenario. I see the key reasons for declining the youth participation are lack of commitment, lack of logistic support and lack of land ownership, insufficient earning and higher factor mobility arising more easy earning opportunities with higher job security. I believe robust relation between relevant authorities and the youth, encouraging youth involvement in agriculture should be evolved through legislation and implementation of policies to guarantee job safety, land accessibility and credit facilities etc.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the main reason for reduction of youth participation in food crop sector is the negative attitude as the author described. Therefore new strategies should be used to attract young generation. For this task the government and private sector have a big responsibility.
ReplyDeleteM.J. Fernando
MDS/ 12
While it is important to encourage youth to participate in agriculture, I believe that the country should also allow structural changes within and outside of the agriculture sector. To move out of the sector, youth should thus be discouraged from involving in agricultural sector and they should be better equipped with enough human capital to transfer into the industrial and services sector. To transform within the sector, you should be encouraged to use new technology in agriculture to get a higher yield from lower inputs. Youth by default is capable. Therefore it is vital for a country to harvest that capacity to the fullest.
ReplyDeleteMarian Fernando
MDS 28 (2013/2014)
Engaging youth in agriculture has been a prominent topic recently and has risen up the development agenda, as there is growing concern worldwide that young people have become disenchanted with agriculture. With most young people around 85% living in developing countries, where agriculture is likely to provide the main source of income it is vital that young people are connected with farming. A younger generation can help introduce new technologies whilst also learning from traditional methods, holding the potential to offer the perfect fusion of new and traditional solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges.
ReplyDeleteManjula Rajapaksha (2014/MDS/15)
Over 60 percent of Sri Lanka’s workforce is estimated to be in the informal sector. Informal agricultural engagement is rising while formal employment in industry is on the decline. The country’s social protection or cover for working people is limited to the formal sector. And workers in the informal sector cannot rely on trade unions to protect their rights. This isn’t healthy for the economy.
ReplyDeleteK.A.W.Fernando
2014/MDS/08
Author described about several factors that contributes to the lower participation of youth for farming activities. My point of view is that youth are not engaging traditional farming activities because of their parents also doing same one, they need bit different thing to that attached with agriculture. It should be export oriented and also using new technological advancement. New exports get more income and new technology attracts young generation for farming. There aren’t not enough space to create good farmer in our education system, but we create advisers for farmers, they also less aware of new technology. Because our education system is more traditional and also agricultural system. My though is we have enough farmers to cultivate traditional food and other things. But we have not enough people who are use new technologies and cultivate export oriented corps. Government should have fill this gap and it is not enough provide fertilizer subsidies and other welfares.
ReplyDeleteS M A Surendra PgDDs
Apart from what author identifies as challenges in youth in agriculture sector, I believe the having enough youth based in Villages and rural areas to engage in agriculture activities is also a crucial factor. Due to various reasons youth migration to urban areas and for foreign employment is on the rise. This could be due to Lack of infrastructure in villages, lack of facilities such as education, health & transport and perception on better wages in urban areas and therefor better quality of life etc...). Therefore merely providing youth with advance technological support and credit may not be sufficient to sustain the youth pool available in village and rural areas to engage in agriculture. The government needs to look at the situation in a holistic approach.
ReplyDeleteThilini Fernando
2014/ MDS 27